


don't you love me now?

by mareas



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Friends to Lovers, M/M, soulmates but not the way u think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23760085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mareas/pseuds/mareas
Summary: Jeonghan has a love-related epiphany, as in, he realizes he's in love. Jeonghan, unfortunately, also has terrible timing.
Relationships: Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 69
Kudos: 221





	1. promises

**Author's Note:**

> i've been trying to write jihan for so long and finally came up with something that worked. the tags say soulmates but not the way u think because there are no soulmate marks and there is no world where two people are destined to be together or anything like that. it's just a story about two people whose souls intertwine.

Jeonghan remembers the very first promise they made. 

They were kids in a playground playing hide and seek, and Jeonghan had hidden a little bit too well. It was the cooler version, the one where the players have to go back to the base to win. He couldn’t really hear the other kids yelling from where he was hiding. He knew his way around the playground, even his way back home, but there was something about the silence that he found unsettling. The darker the sky got, the more his fear grew. He just wanted to win the game. The stakes were high, just like they always are when you’re a kid. The problem was, his mind had started assigning shapes to the shadows that grew every passing minute, turning them into creatures, into people whose faces he couldn’t recognize, into monsters. They were scary. He realized it scared him more to run out than to stay. 

So Jeonghan curled up and made himself as small as he could, tiny, and thought about his mom, and about how she would surely come and get him, right? He didn’t want to cry, he hated crying, it made his eyes puffy and itchy. It was then that he heard rustling behind him, someone moving in between the bushes, stepping on dry leaves. He turned around, his eyes wide open like saucers, and tried to scream but the sound died in his throat. He was too scared to make a sound.

“Shh, shhh!” he heard, and when his terrified brain finally caught up, he realized it was another boy, just like him. He had never seen him before. “Are you hiding too?” the boy whispered.

Jeonghan didn’t want him to know he was scared. Even at that age, Jeonghan didn’t want anyone to know his weaknesses. So instead of speaking, knowing his voice might give him away, he nodded.

“Cool,” the other boy said. “What’s your name?”

And this time Jeonghan couldn’t stay quiet, someone had asked him a question, so he audibly swallowed and answered.

“Jeonghan. What is your name?” he said, because he thought they needed to be on equal ground. If the boy knew his name, Jeonghan also wanted to know his.

“Joshua,” he said, extending his hand for Jeonghan to shake it. It was sweaty and dirty like every kid’s hand always is, and so was Jeonghan’s. He reached out to shake it as he looked at the boy’s face.

“Your eyes look like a cat’s,” he said. They really did. They were long and the corners went on and on. Just like a cat’s.

Joshua smiled at him. “My mom says that too.”

He stood up and looked over the bushes, totally unafraid of the monsters hiding in the shadows.

“I’ll go check if someone’s there. I’ll tell you if it’s clear.”

“And if you get caught?” Jeonghan asked. Didn’t Joshua want to win too?

“Then you win for me,” he said. “For both of us.”

And Jeonghan, at that age, couldn’t understand. You can’t win for other people, not in hide and seek. Maybe Joshua just didn’t like the game. That made more sense.

When Joshua was about to step out into the light, to jump away from the safety of the bushes, exposed to the other kids and to the monsters made of shadows, Jeonghan thought he was brave. He wished he was brave like him. 

“Don’t get caught,” he said. “Come back for me and we can win together.”

It was an unfair request, and Jeonghan knew that, but he still made it.

“Okay,” Joshua said, smiling at him. “I’ll come back for you. Promise.”

.

Jeonghan also remembers the first time he lied for someone else’s benefit instead of his own.

Joshua had been acting weird the whole morning, he was distant, and at one point he disappeared. He then showed up to their next class smelling like smoke and ashes. Jeonghan didn’t ask. It was poor planning on Joshua’s part, even though Jeonghan always knew there was barely any planning involved. 

“Who is playing with matches?” was the first thing their geometry teacher asked when she walked into the classroom, using that tone of voice that meant whoever it was was in trouble. The smell of matches carries.

Jeonghan didn’t know why Joshua was playing with matches. He didn’t know what Joshua had used them for, what he had lit on fire, but it didn’t matter.

“Me,” he said. “I only had a couple of them. Lit them and watched them burn, that’s it.”

He was thoroughly yelled at, but he didn’t care. It was easy to tune everything out.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Joshua told him after.

“Already did, there’s no going back,” Jeonghan said. “Tell me what you used them for.”

He knew Joshua would, because he felt guilty that Jeonghan had covered for him.

“Tests. I burned them.”

They were kids, barely teenagers, what else would he have used them for?

“Well if you ever wanna pull something like that again, just tell me,” said Jeonghan. “I’ll steal some dude’s deodorant to cover it up, that way no one gets yelled at.”

When he looked back at Joshua, he was staring back in confusion.

“I’m just joking,” Jeonghan went on, “I’ll only borrow it. Promise, I’ll give it back.”

That was not why Joshua was staring, and Jeonghan knew that, but he didn’t want Joshua to overthink it, mainly because he also didn’t want to overthink it himself. Jeonghan lied if he had to, but he lied for himself. He never lied for someone else’s benefit, and more importantly, he never lied to his own detriment. And yet there he was, taking the blame for Joshua without a care in the world, like it came naturally to him. It confused him, how naturally it came. And it confused him even more to come to the conclusion that he’d do it again. For Joshua, he’d lie again.

.

Jeonghan remembers the first time he rationalized he was happy.

He’d felt happiness many times before, of course, but there was just something different about it this time because it wasn’t only the feeling, it was the acute awareness of the feeling.

They were riding their bikes even though Jeonghan could drive because Joshua liked bikes better and the weather was nice. Joshua had a speaker attached to some part of his bike and his music was playing, it was almost the summer but not quite, the sky was blue and they reached the part of the road where it went downhill. They let their bikes go, started gaining speed and Jeonghan looked up, saw the grass on both sides of the road and the mountains very close, the sky seemed eternal, Joshua was beside him, and the wind was blowing their hair back. 

At that moment, while speeding downhill, Jeonghan thought he was happy, and full of love for a million things.

It immediately made him feel like something was clenching inside his chest. It hurt, it hurt like it hurts when you long for something, but he wasn’t sad at all, he was happy. Maybe, he thought, it was the realization that for that minute, as they rode their bikes downhill, not a single thing was out of place. It was perfect, the moment was perfect, and maybe it was okay to feel nostalgia for the present when the present transformed into fleeting perfection. 

He wanted that forever, he realized. He wanted that moment to remain for so long that he wouldn’t have to ache for it. He knew he couldn’t have it, because perfection is an imbalanced state. It can only exist for brief moments before keeling over and spilling everything into disarray. But he still wanted that forever, and if he couldn’t keep that feeling, if his heart couldn’t swell for the sky, the wind in his face, the speed, and the boy next to him at the same time, then he’d hold on with all his might to all the separate elements. He’d dig his nails in and never let go.

There was only one of those elements he had the power of holding onto forever, though, and he promised himself as they reached the bottom of the hill that he would.

.

“Would you ever make a sex tape?” Jeonghan asked Joshua. 

It was two in the morning and they were awake in the tiny apartment they shared, eyelids heavy and papers scattered all around them. Jeonghan was sitting on his desk because if he studied in any other position he’d fall asleep, and Joshua was curled up on his bed because he somehow managed to not get cricks in his neck even if he twisted himself into the weirdest positions and studied like that for a while.

Jeonghan had been studying cases for hours and his brain wasn’t really processing information anymore. When that happened, his mind usually went through a chain of unfortunate events that culminated in the idea that if he failed as a law student and was starving at some point in his life, he’d probably sell a sex tape. It wasn’t ideal, but he was the type of person who was always searching for the faster, easier solutions, even if he always rejected most of them.

“With you?” Joshua asked, not looking up from his notes. Jeonghan snorted.

“Not how I meant it, but I’m flattered that that’s what came to mind,” he said, laughing when Joshua threw one of his socks at him.

“If I had to, I would,” Joshua said, still not looking up from his notes. “I think leaking sex tapes is like, an invasion of privacy in our day and age, though. Like, it’s not gonna make you famous.”

“No one would be leaking my hypothetical sex tape, though. It would literally be me saying ‘I’m Yoon Jeonghan and this is my sex tape.’ And it’d be for money, not fame.”

“So you would make a sex tape,” Joshua finally looked up at him, started capping and uncapping his highlighter.

“Well listen, if I don’t learn these cases and I fail my classes and get terrible grades and barely graduate, and then no one wants to hire me and I’m a failed lawyer with no food to eat? Then yeah, I’ll make a sex tape.”

Jeonghan was aware that he sounded ridiculous, but that was a real train of thought that he followed, and now Joshua was smiling at him, which always made Jeonghan feel good about himself. He decided he wanted to go on.

“Would you pay for my sex tape, Shua?”

“No.”

“Why not?!” Jeonghan frowned, almost genuinely bothered.

“Well if you were starving and I wasn’t I’d just give you money, I wouldn’t ask for a sex tape in exchange,” Joshua said, which made total sense, really, but now Jeonghan was having fun and he wanted to drag this out, pester Joshua a little longer.

“But if I had already filmed it, it would just be you rejecting the fruit of my labor. Like, I worked hard on it, and you’re throwing that away.”

“I’m not throwing anything away, Jeonghan, because you haven’t filmed a sex tape and this is a hypothetical scenario!” and oh, how Jeonghan loved to get Joshua riled up. His notes were abandoned on the bed and he was sitting up now, eyes wide open and arguing back.

“Can you just be a supportive friend and say you would pay for my sex tape if I was starving and needed money so we can keep studying?” Jeonghan asked, making it seem like Joshua was the one prolonging the exchange.

Joshua exhaled harshly.

“Fine. If you’re ever broke and make a sex tape, I’ll pay for it,” he said, turning around and trying to find the page he was reading before Jeonghan interrupted him.

Jeonghan was making a huge effort not to openly cackle.

“Thank you,” he said, smile wide on his face. “Just so you know, if you were broke and made a sex tape, I’d also pay for it.”

“How generous of you.”

They went back to studying for about fifteen seconds before Jeonghan spoke up again. 

“What if we’re both broke and can’t afford each other’s sex tapes?” he said, unable to help himself that time, throwing his head back and laughing silently, his shoulders shaking when Joshua looked up in exasperation.

“Then we make a sex tape together and split the revenue.”

“Promise?” Jeonghan asked, the word coming out mixed in with laughter.

“Yes. Now shut up so we can go to sleep before five in the morning.”

But it took Jeonghan a while to go back to studying, because he was busy looking at the soft smile on Joshua’s face and the pink tips of his ears.

.

Jeonghan didn’t realize Joshua was a problem until he had become too big of a problem.

It was too hot outside and Joshua had gotten a different job because the last one he had sucked, and he’d told Jeonghan to come over. He was working at one of the stands in the park selling smoothies or something, and Jeonghan made him promise he would give Jeonghan one for free if he came by. So naturally, Jeonghan did. He just wasn’t expecting to have a life-altering realization at a smoothie stand on campus.

Because when he got there Joshua was barely wearing clothes. His shirt was sleeveless but the holes on the sides reached his waist, his arms were out and he looked strong, and it was weird because Jeonghan had seen Joshua without clothes on countless occasions, so why did he feel his body temperature rise by approximately a trillion degrees? _It’s the summer,_ he told himself, _the summer, just that._ Except it wasn’t, not really, because he had spent at least 18 summers in his life with Joshua, and his specific skin tone had never made Jeonghan want to lick him all over. It wasn’t even only that, it was his golden skin and the way that complemented his hair color, which was somewhere in between light brown and dark blond, getting so long it got in his eyes, and he was smiling at customers and preparing fucking smoothies and Jeonghan felt positively insane.

“There you are,” Joshua said, directing that smile at Jeonghan and making him feel weak in the knees, what the fuck. 

But Jeonghan, as always, was a good actor.

“I’m only out in this heat because I was promised a free smoothie,” he said, sitting on one of the stools and resting his arms on the counter.

“Strawberry banana?”

“No, let me see what you have,” Jeonghan said, and Joshua reached over and gave him the menu even though they both knew Jeonghan was going to pick strawberry banana anyway. 

In reality, Jeonghan wasn’t looking at the menu. He was looking at Joshua, Joshua being kind to people and making small talk, and people beaming back because who wouldn’t beam at someone that beautiful making them a delicious cold drink on a hot summer day? Why hadn’t Jeonghan been swooning at Joshua his whole life? Or had he?

Jeonghan usually wasn’t bothered by change, he was fairly adaptable, it’s just he wasn’t used to having the metaphorical rug pulled from under him so violently. Right then he felt completely lost, and that bothered him because he didn’t like not being in control. He was the one supposed to make Joshua blush and sputter, not the other way around, and Joshua wasn’t even doing anything. 

Jeonghan asked for his strawberry banana smoothie like everyone knew he was going to, and then he decided that he needed to get out of there because he felt incapacitated by the fact that suddenly Joshua glowed in the sun and Jeonghan wanted to taste him. That was in no way good, it wasn’t good for anyone and Jeonghan couldn’t think.

He sipped on his smoothie all the way to Seungkwan’s room, because Seungkwan was smart and good to talk to when you couldn’t talk to Joshua, which clearly Jeonghan couldn’t do at the moment.

“I think I have a problem,” he said once Seungkwan opened the door, walking in and sitting on his bed.

“Mhm, please come in, make yourself comfortable,” Seungkwan rolled his eyes. “What can I do for you?”

This was the part Jeonghan was bad at. He sucked at talking, especially about himself, his thing was listening. He wasn’t like Seungkwan, who could spill his guts and wore his heart on his sleeve. Hell, even Jihoon was better at this than him, at least he got the words out even if they came out rushed and ragged around the edges. 

“So you know… how I’m with you right? Like, you’re my friend. And I’m also friends with Jihoon, and, you know, other people, right?”

“Yes Jeonghan, I’m aware that you have friends.”

“Yes, good. So I have friends who I treat like friends. And I was thinking that Joshua is my friend too. So am I the same - like, when I’m with my friends I don’t - is it different? When I’m with Joshua, is it different?”

Jeonghan was grateful that Seungkwan was smart, because he didn’t think any of what he said made sense at all. But when he looked up from where he was glaring at the floor, Seungkwan was almost looking at him pitifully.

“Oh, Jeonghan,” he said, and those two words opened a pit of panic in Jeonghan’s stomach.

“No, no, Seungkwan, don’t ‘oh Jeonghan’ me, I am here for you to tell me that I’m making things up,” Jeonghan practically pleaded. “I literally am in your room right now waiting for you to knock some sense into me, please don’t validate me, Seungkwan, what am I gonna do?”

“Well at least you realized,” Seungkwan said, sitting next to Jeonghan. “It only took you, what, about fifteen years?”

“Don’t make fun of me, my life is over,” Jeonghan said burying his face in his hands. “Did everyone know but me?”

“Don’t be so melodramatic, you’re gonna be fine. And I mean, there’s a chance Soonyoung doesn’t know.”

“That is not comforting.”

“Fine. Everyone knew.”

“Seungkwan!”

“You asked!”

Seungkwan placed his hand on Jeonghan’s shoulder, rubbing soothingly.

“Look, um. This is good, ‘cause now you can tell him.”

“I thought you were smart.”

“I am. And you can listen to me, or I can sit by your side all day while you take a billion ‘are you in love with him?’ quizzes on those websites for teenage girls, but I think we’ll both give you the same answer.”

“I can’t be in love with Joshua. Seungkwan, I can’t be. Aren’t there supposed to be like, phases before that? Like, butterflies, and then a crush, and then obsession or something like that, and attachment… or whatever? You don’t go from zero to in love in the three minutes it takes for someone to make you a smoothie. This isn’t the right time to fall in love.”

“First of all, that’s fucked up that you think those are the stages of falling in love, let me tell you. Second of all, there’s no wrong or right time to fall in love. Third, Jeonghan, what do you think you’ve been doing for the past decade?”

Jeonghan remained silent for a long minute.

“Oh, fuck me.”

.

Hours later, Jeonghan was sulking in Seungkwan’s bed, ready to take his fourth quiz while the younger watched a movie on his computer beside him.

_How flawed is the person in question?_

Flawed just like everyone else, and it wasn’t that Jeonghan was attracted to Joshua’s flaws or anything, it was more like he’d learned to deal with them. None of them made him want to push Joshua away, they were insignificant next to everything good that came out of their friendship.

_Can you imagine having sex with only this person for the rest of your life?_

Jeonghan thought that was too dramatic, he just wanted to know if he was in love. He didn’t even wanna imagine having sex with Joshua, realizing that his body was delicious and Jeonghan wanted to put his mouth on it filled the sex related epiphanies quota of the day.

_Can you name this person’s favorite food/TVshows/band/movie?_

Yes, of course he could. Either they were the same as his, or Jeonghan completely despised them. 

_What are your arguments like?_

Very stupid. They seldom argued, too used to each other already, too aware of how not to step on each other’s toes. If they argued it was about stupid shit, like what they wanted to eat for dinner.

Jeonghan hadn’t realized that Seungkwan was looking at his phone instead of watching the movie until the question _Can you both fart openly in front of each other?_ came up, and Seungkwan scoffed.

“These questions suck. I’m gonna ask you the real questions, since you clearly prefer the test format over your friend giving you good advice based on facts and observation.”

Jeonghan stretched out on the bed, buried his face in Seungkwan’s pillow, and waited.

“First question. Does he make you feel safe?” 

“Yes.” 

Jeonghan braced himself for the second question.

“Actually, fuck the questions. Listen to me, Jeonghan, are you listening?”

“Yes,” Jeonghan mumbled into the pillow.

“Jeonghan, Joshua knows you better than anyone. He’s stuck around for over fifteen years, and I know you think you’re not easy to handle, so think about what that means. You think making him laugh makes you feel good because it means you’ve got a good sense of humor, have you considered it feels good just because you like seeing him happy? You guys have a scary connection, and I mean that. It’s like it’s not just friendship, like you have a permanent place in each other’s lives. You hate that one law show because you think it’s inaccurate but you ditch your other friends to watch it with him on Thursdays because he likes it. You find it endearing that he makes your apartment look like those apartments in magazines because he can’t stand it when things are disorganized. Jeonghan, you look at him like you’d move mountains for him if you had to, and you know what’s crazy? He looks at you the same way.”

Jeonghan felt like his brain was working so fast it was going to overheat and then melt out of his ears.

“You asked me, as soon as you came in, if you’re different with him. Here’s what I have to say about that. You want to be there for your friends all the time, Jeonghan. You figure out what they need, and you accommodate. What other people need, you can give it to them, whether that’s a friend, a listener, someone to lean on, or someone to bounce ideas off of. Your interactions are more about the other person than they are about you, whether you’re listening or making fun of them.”

Jeonghan knew so far it was true. Reading people, understanding how they think and feel, that had always come naturally to Jeonghan, but to most people he was unreadable. Except for Seungkwan, who could apparently read him like a book. And Jihoon, but Jeonghan had yet to find something Jihoon didn’t excel at, so he didn’t count.

“With Joshua it’s not like that. When you’re with Joshua you are completely and unapologetically yourself. Everything you hold back when you’re with other people, it’s like you set it loose when he’s around. Things are not only about him, because when you’re with him you think it’s okay to make them about you.”

“That makes me sound like a dick.”

“Maybe. But the way I see it, it’s because with him you don’t put up fronts. You’re as free as it gets. All the things that you don’t want to show to other people, Joshua already knows them intimately. So you don’t hide when you’re with him, you’re as yourself as you can possibly be. You know why? Because all of those things that you hide, not only has he seen them, he has also stuck around in spite of them.”

“Ew, okay, enough, I get it Seungkwan,” there was blood rushing in his head. Because it was true, and if Jeonghan really thought about it, he didn’t think anyone would ever care for him like Joshua did. He knew Joshua loved him, he didn’t know in what way, but he did know Joshua loved him. And he’d have to be blind, out of his mind, he’d have to hate himself not to fall head over heels in love with the only person who had ever cared like that, and never stopped caring.

.

Jeonghan walked back to the apartment he shared with Joshua feeling empty, completely drained, and also full to the brim. So when he opened the door and found him sitting in the living room, waiting for Jeonghan to come home to tell him that he was going to move away for six months, Jeonghan thought there was only one thing Seungkwan hadn’t been right about. There was definitely a wrong time to fall in love, and Jeonghan had hit bullseye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! so. i’ve had this in my drafts for a month and i’m really only posting it because today’s the last day before ao3 deletes it. i reread it just now to see if i wanted to let it die and decided that i still like it, so i’m putting it out there.  
> i think my audience is mostly made up of soonhoonists but i wanted to try something else and i thought childhood friends to lovers was a good way to go with jihan. this is what came out of that.  
> also yes, if i write a chaptered fic i’m obligated to include sex tape related conversations.  
> lmk if u liked this!  
> i’m @hug_mp3 on both twitter and cc (very much inactive recently though) if u wanna come hang out  
> ♡


	2. bonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sure this is how you wanted to spend your last day here,” Jeonghan says, voice icy and self-deprecating. “You know, eating convenience store food with me during a storm in the middle of nowhere.”
> 
> “It could be worse,” Joshua shrugs.
> 
> “Sure,” admits Jeonghan, “if we got struck by lightning.”

A month goes by in the midst of exams, sticky warm weather, and Jeonghan trying to avoid the passage of time. He’s not in denial, he just doesn’t want to think about Joshua leaving. Seungkwan says that’s denial, and Jeonghan pretends like he doesn’t listen. It’s not like they don’t spend any time together, their routines remain pretty much the same. The only difference is now whenever Joshua is around, Jeonghan feels sick with want. It’s affecting every area of his life, and if he’s good enough at pretending that most people don’t notice, _he_ sure notices.

Studying for finals becomes nearly impossible. Jeonghan is trying to memorize the elements of a negligence cause of action and he looks at Joshua for no reason other than he’s pretty and Jeonghan likes looking at all things pretty. The loop of _duty, breach, proximate cause, damage_ that he had been replaying in his head slows down and then dissolves when he notices Joshua is pinching his bottom lip between his index finger and thumb, pressing his fingers against the plump flesh. It’s mesmerizing. When he lets it go, his lip is a few shades darker. The bastard. Jeonghan has to physically tear his gaze away, and that night he goes to sleep thinking about fingertips against mouths, and about how he needs somebody to wipe his brain or maybe exorcize him.

That’s how Jeonghan spends his summer days, hoping Joshua doesn’t come home after him because when he does, Joshua ends up walking in with color high on his cheeks, a light sheen of sweat everywhere on his exposed skin. And there’s a lot of exposed skin. Jeonghan is sure there’s something wrong with him because it should be gross but it’s not. He feels primitive, like maybe he devolved a few species because he gets the extremely primal urge to lick at the sweat on Joshua’s collarbone and confirm if the warmth from the sun is still clinging to his skin.

It’s even worse when Joshua openly cares for him, because one thing is Joshua’s physique making Jeonghan react like an uncivilized creature, and another thing is having solid proof that Joshua is, above everything, a kind and caring person who knows Jeonghan inside out. Like when Jeonghan falls asleep on the couch wearing his glasses and wakes up to see them on the coffee table. Or when Joshua buys the exact brand of melon bread that Jeonghan likes even though “it feels like chewing on leather.” Or when he leaves piles of pink Starbursts where he knows Jeonghan will find them, because Jeonghan only likes the pink ones. 

Jeonghan chews on his pink Starbursts a little too violently while he thinks about how everything Joshua does makes him want to put his fist through a wall. He sends a picture of the candy resting on his hand to Seungkwan, who replies with an unnecessary amount of question marks. Jeonghan forgets Seungkwan can’t read his mind through the phone.

Once finals are over they decide to celebrate by going out and getting totally shitfaced. The bar is full and the music is loud, and all their close friends are there. Even Jihoon shows up, which is a bit unbelievable since he doesn’t like drinking. It makes things funnier, though, because they get to watch Soonyoung go from zero to absolutely smitten in the fifteen seconds it takes Jihoon to introduce himself. Soonyoung is drunk and an extremely shameless flirt, and Jihoon laughs at him not like he’s flattered or flirting back, more like he’s making fun of him. 

Jeonghan suddenly decides that he feels super comfortable. His head is swimming pleasantly, and when it starts feeling too heavy he lets it fall on Joshua’s shoulder. Physical intimacy has never been an issue for Jeonghan, not with Joshua and not with anyone else. The only problem is now he craves it, and every time Joshua’s hands end up on him he feels like he’s burning, melting under that point of contact. But it’s whatever, everything is a little bit fuzzy and Joshua’s shirt smells like his cologne and their detergent and alcohol. Jeonghan wants to sink into it like a cloud.

Then Joshua laughs and he lifts his hand up to cover his face, and when he drops it he drops it onto Jeonghan’s thigh. He leaves it there, and Jeonghan looks down at it out of the corner of his eye. If his eyes could shoot lasers he thinks he would be trying to either blast it away or meld it into his flesh forever. He’s going crazy. He slides his own hand close, close enough to Joshua’s that they could be touching but they decidedly aren’t, and curses the universe. Seriously, the stars couldn’t have picked a worse moment to align.

Later, when they stumble back into the apartment clinging to each other, Joshua tells him that Seungkwan is trying to find a place to live that’s closer to campus next semester, and he asks if Jeonghan would be okay with Seungkwan staying here until Joshua comes back. Suddenly, Jeonghan feels terribly, annoyingly sober. He thinks it’s probably the best he’s gonna get. Seungkwan is nice and Jeonghan doesn’t feel bad about pestering him the way he does sometimes feel bad about pestering Jihoon. Not that that’s ever stopped him.

“Let me have the weekend,” Jeonghan asks as Joshua hands him a glass of water. Joshua leaves on a Monday, which is basically in a week.

“Saturday’s my mom’s,” Joshua frowns.

“Let me have Sunday, then.”

“Yeah,” Joshua takes the empty glass from him and walks towards the sink. “Sunday’s yours.”

“I can drive you on Monday.”

“I was gonna make you anyway,” Joshua smiles at him, one of the small ones that makes the corners of his mouth tilt up. 

Jeonghan has never in his life wanted to kiss someone else this badly.

.

Jeonghan is good at improvising. Things work when he improvises, the gods decide that he should prosper, and he does. Things _do not_ work out when he plans them out. Maybe he shouldn’t have made plans, he thinks. But he _did_ make plans, and he needed them to go right because he made them for Joshua.

He gets called into work on Sunday because apparently every single one of his coworkers is dying and there is not one soul his manager could’ve called aside from him. And he can’t get fired because if there is one thing Jeonghan despises it’s job interviews. All of which means he shows up to work and has to mentally cancel his late morning plans with Joshua. He cancels the lunch plans too because he clocks out at 5pm, and he feels a little bit like it’s the end of the world. Joshua assures him that it’s fine, but it’s really not, and Jeonghan spends the last hour of his shift grinding his teeth.

When he finally clocks out, Joshua meets him at an intersection, his bike leaning against a tree. Jeonghan rides his bike past him, making sure to snatch Joshua’s hat off his head and wearing it on his own before turning his bike around. Joshua is running his fingers through his hair, which remained flattened against his skull when Jeonghan took the cap off. Jeonghan is aware that there’s a smile currently splitting his face in half. He pushes the thought of not having Joshua around to bother and make fun of for the next six months into a vault in a dark corner of his mind, then locks it and throws the key. Not today.

“Nice of you to finally show up,” says Joshua.

“Fuck you, I’m a mere victim of the capitalist machine,” Jeonghan hands the hat back. 

“I don’t think you’ve ever been a victim of anything.”

“Be nice to me, I just spent my Sunday at work,” Jeonghan whines.

“And I spent mine watching restoration videos in your bed waiting for you.” 

Jeonghan would sacrifice several things in life if that was true, and he really got to clock out and go home to Joshua waiting for him in his bed. But it’s not, and Joshua’s only waiting for him because Jeonghan asked, and he’s only in his bed because all of his shit is packed up and ready to be shipped across the world. Joshua just wanted to lie on a bed with pillows. Jeonghan understands that.

He finally has Joshua to himself, though, which means he can go along with his plan.

Except things get worse. Imagine the scene: you are Jeonghan and you saw, not long ago, the boy you love scrolling through a dessert shop’s Instagram page. You, with your incredible stealth, and maybe the help of one or two friends, manage to find the shop, and decide to take the boy you love there one day before he moves away. The page says _reservations only_ , so you call to make one, just to be told that they’re booked full. You show up in person, weaponizing your good looks and putting your dignity on the line for the manager to open up a spot for you. He does. You expect the boy you love to delight himself with a really good slice of overpriced and very cutely decorated red velvet cake. Except both his red velvet slice and your own carrot cake taste, you swear to every god, like dry dirt.

“It’s fine,” Joshua says after they’ve both spent half a minute in silence, trying to swallow the bites they took.

It’s not fine. It’s the end of the world, Jeonghan thinks.

“Look.” Joshua continues. “Did we just get scammed? For sure. But if the place is just good because it has Instagram-worthy food, then we might as well take pictures of it, yeah?” 

Joshua pulls out his phone and starts doing exactly that, like nothing happened. Meanwhile, Jeonghan stares at the food like it personally wronged him, which it _did_ , all while plagued with thoughts about how the universe is conspiring against him. The flash of Joshua’s camera makes him snap out of it.

“I thought you were going to take pictures of the food.”

“I was,” Joshua says, phone still pointing at Jeonghan. He hears the picture sound once more, this time with no flash, and then he buries his face in his hands because this is, in every way, extremely embarrassing. Putting in effort to get them to the place where they currently are for it to ultimately suck is embarrassing. Joshua trying to make it better by taking pictures of him with the cardboard-tasting food is embarrassing, and it makes Jeonghan blush instantly because he doesn’t like it when things are about him unless it’s on his own terms and he’s making them about himself. Embarrassing, the whole thing.

Overall, nothing about the situation is good, except for how Jeonghan convinces Joshua to pass over and taste the mostly intact pie the two girls sitting in the booth next to theirs left behind. 

“Ew, I can’t believe you just ate someone else’s leftovers,” Jeonghan says as soon as Joshua’s lips close around the spoon, as if he’s not directly responsible for the whole thing himself.

“I’m used to putting questionable things in my mouth,” Joshua smiles as he swallows a mouthful of pie and Jeonghan wonders if he just made a sex joke, and if he himself is in the right headspace to tolerate Joshua making sex jokes, and then— “Exhibit A: I’ve tasted your cooking.”

What a jerk. 

“Fuck you,” Jeonghan laughs, and shoves a spoonful of pie into his mouth. The saddest part is it’s better than the cakes. 

Like that, they share the abandoned pie that they never ordered, ignoring all controversial aspects of eating a stranger’s leftovers, and Jeonghan pays an obscene amount of money for two very stale slices of cake on their way out.

Jeonghan thinks things are starting to look up when he gets to take Joshua around the narrow streets that he knows Joshua never walks down because he is a creature of habit. Jeonghan is too, but he branches out more often, so he knows how pretty the roads look a day after the festival, when the lanterns are still hanging overhead but there are no crowds. They ride their bikes down the small streets, and it’s really kind of cute, Jeonghan thinks. The houses with potted plants and colored bikes outside, Joshua’s side profile to his left, the skyline interrupted only by lamp posts and lanterns, the silence broken only by their conversation, Joshua’s skin under natural light… Joshua snaps pictures sometimes, the craft of bike riding mastered to the point where he doesn’t need to stop, he just slows down to take pictures one-handed. Jeonghan feels that very familiar nostalgia start to creep in the way it does when everything about the moment is undeniably beautiful.

But Jeonghan is dead wrong, things aren’t looking up at all and nothing is beautiful.

Imagine the scene: you are Jeonghan, and the boy you love is obsessed with space. Like, to an alarming degree. Because you pay attention and you are kind and also in love, you decide to take him to the City Observatory. It’s this gigantic building meant for watching celestial bodies, which you think is better than taking the boy you love to a museum on his last day in town. You’d frankly rather die than do that. But then, as you both stop and get off your bikes to get something to drink from a vending machine, you get a message from the Observatory saying that all reservations for tonight are cancelled because of weather conditions.

Jeonghan looks up at the dark gray clouds that he hadn’t noticed looming over their heads and curses at the heavens because it’s getting to be a little too much. _What did I do?_ he mentally yells, because seriously, all the evil he’s done in his life doesn’t amount to this, and also, Joshua has nothing to do with it, so why should he be implicated in Jeonghan’s karmic punishment? The heavens, as if to directly retort, release a storm as soon as the thought manifests in Jeonghan’s head. He feels like those ancient Greek heroes who defied the gods and had their fury unleashed upon them in the form of like, a cyclone, or something.

Jeonghan and Joshua barely have time to ride their bikes the 10 minutes it takes them to get to the nearest convenience store, and when they park them outside and walk in, they’re both mostly soaked. At this point, Jeonghan has pretty much given up. He goes to the cup ramen aisle to find something to eat because he’s frustrated and angry, and he thinks the best thing to do is probably stuff his face with shitty food. They both pick out convenience store dinner and dessert, and sit at the little tables in the corner next to an old lady.

“Don’t apologize,” Joshua says, tying his cap to his belt loop and running his hands through his damp hair while Jeonghan chews on his noodles like he’s seeking revenge.

It makes Jeonghan snort, because he hasn’t swallowed his pride yet, so he’s not at the apology stage yet. He’ll get there, though.

“I’m sure this is how you wanted to spend your last day here,” Jeonghan says, voice icy and self-deprecating. “You know, eating convenience store food with me during a storm in the middle of nowhere.”

“It could be worse,” Joshua shrugs.

“Sure,” admits Jeonghan, “if we got struck by lightning.”

Joshua rolls his eyes and is about to respond, when the old lady sitting next to them drops something to the ground. Joshua, like the gentleman he is to everyone who is not called Yoon Jeonghan, bends over to pick it up. When he straightens up again, he’s holding what looks like a charm in the palm of his hand and reaching over so the lady can grab it. She does, except then her fingers curl around Joshua’s hand, and she doesn’t let go.

“Um,” Joshua says.

She looks up at Joshua, eyes dark and wise.

“You have a journey ahead of you, young man,” she says, her voice deep. It makes Jeonghan think of those old trees in kids movies who have a personality and also a collection of all the world’s knowledge. “You can relax. What you leave behind will wait for you.”

Jeonghan thinks maybe this is all a little bit scary, but Joshua himself looks fascinated. Jeonghan doesn’t usually believe in the supernatural, in ghosts or energies or any of that, mostly because he doesn’t have a lot of information about it, and he can’t keep his attention on only one thing for a long period of time, so informing himself is out of the question. What little he knows, he knows because Joshua does believe in pulling cards and the zodiac and all of that, and Jeonghan likes him too much to refuse to listen to him talk about it.

Now, however, Jeonghan is curious. He guesses the woman might’ve heard him talk about Joshua’s last day, and made assumptions about his trip based on that. Hell, maybe she can actually see the future, who knows? Jeonghan watches her run her index finger down the middle of Joshua’s palm.

“Your soul is tied to this place in more ways than you understand. Soul bonds are hard to break, because they run deeper than any other. So don’t you worry. As much as you stretch them, they’ll bounce back into place,” she gives Joshua a warm smile, her eyes sparkling with inaccessible wisdom.

“His soul?” asks Jeonghan, mostly intrigued, partly not wanting to be left out, partly wanting Joshua’s attention back.

The woman turns her gaze towards him, and Jeonghan suddenly feels stripped down and open, completely transparent. She lets go of Joshua’s hand and reaches over towards Jeonghan, palm up, an unspoken question in the gesture. Her fingers are covered in rings. Jeonghan realizes that he’s nervous, but he rests his own hand over hers anyway. As soon as they make contact, her eyes widen slightly in understanding.

“You’re blessed,” she starts. Outside, lightning illuminates the sky. It rains on. “Don’t exhaust yourself. The universe is ready to give you what belongs to you. You just have to let yourself be vulnerable enough to ask for it.”

Jeonghan frowns. He wants to pretend like he has absolutely no clue what that means, but he actually _can_ think of something it could mean, which is troublesome. He’ll unpack it later. For now, he really feels like being a nuisance, maybe because acting skeptic is more palatable than the possibility that this stranger knows him better than he knows himself.

“And my soul?”

She now traces the pad of her finger down Jeonghan’s palm. She frowns.

“It has a shape. Like you put it in a mould. Like it grew around—” she reaches for Joshua’s hand again, holds their hands and looks from one to the other, then her eyes clear in understanding once more. “Ah. Fascinating.”

She takes a deep breath and continues.

“Souls are not static. They are not monoliths. They grow and change shape, just like every other part of a living being. The idea that they can be bound by destiny is a misconception, and so is the idea that they complete each other. Souls don’t inherently belong together, and they are whole, complete entities on their own. But sometimes,” she inhales deeply again, “sometimes souls exist so close together that when they grow, their shapes change to accommodate each other.”

Like water taking the shape of its container, Jeonghan thinks. The woman turns to look at him, a soft, understanding smile on her face. It makes him feel like he’s five years old and very dumb.

“Rather, like two flowers who were planted so close together, that their stems inevitably tangle when they bloom towards the sun,” she corrects, and it should be creepy that she’s correcting Jeonghan’s _thoughts_ , but he’s weirdly okay with it. “This is how souls form bonds. And those bonds strengthen in many ways.” She looks Joshua in the eye, then Jeonghan. “Promises happen to be one of them.”

She stands up from her chair and steps away. “I’ll be going before the storm starts up again. Perhaps you should too.”

Then she walks out of the store and disappears into the night.

Jeonghan hadn’t even noticed that the rain had stopped, and he briefly wonders if maybe the woman made it stop with the supernatural powers she clearly, evidently has. Then he realizes the whole thing sounds insane, and he lets the thought go.

Neither of them says anything. It’s a little bit stress-inducing when a stranger whips out her palmistry skills in a convenience store to tell you that your soul is completely wrapped around someone else’s, if that’s even what that was. Jeonghan actively doesn’t think about it, which means he can’t get it out of his head.

“Come on,” he says, saving the soul bond lecture induced headache for later. “I wanna try something else. One last thing.”

Jeonghan makes them take the train because he doesn’t want a repeat of what happened earlier, and anyway, the place they’re going is kind of far.

“Are we going to Jihoon’s?” Joshua asks once he realizes they’re three blocks away from his apartment and walking in its direction.

“Not exactly.”

The building where Jihoon lives is tall and conveniently placed on top of one of the city’s many hills, and Jeonghan conveniently knows the code to unlock the door to the rooftop. He figures it’s the best he’s going to get. It might be too cloudy to look at the stars, but if he takes Joshua somewhere high enough, the cars will also look like tiny specks of light in the distance. Not ideal, but Jeonghan tries to make do.

The rooftop isn’t wet because the skies had no doubt unleashed their ire on Jeonghan only, meaning it hadn’t rained in this part of the city. There’s a wall tall enough to prevent people from tumbling over the edge. They walk over and lean against it, Joshua on his elbows, Jeonghan resting his head on his folded arms. 

It is a pretty view, Jeonghan has to admit. Somehow cities look nicer from above. The lights in the dark also make him nostalgic, and he doesn’t know what for. It barely makes sense to him when he feels like this, once again longing for the present moment, but seeing the illuminated dry-cleaning and optical shop neon signs from a rooftop makes his chest feel tight, which is, all things considered, really fucking dumb. Who gets emotional from looking at dry-cleaning signs? Jeonghan, apparently. He lets out a laugh that sounds more like a cough.

“What’s so funny?” asks Joshua. Jeonghan doesn’t have the time to prepare for the way Joshua’s face looks all hidden in shadows, only illuminated by faint glows. He’s beautiful and Jeonghan knows, he wishes it would stop hitting him like a kick to the gut every time.

“Your face looks terrifying in the shadows,” he decides to say.

“Stop looking, then.” 

Jeonghan would if he could. He would also start the revolution to the corners of Joshua’s eyes. If he went to war he’d carry a picture of them like soldiers carry faded pictures of their sweethearts. He’s out of his mind. He presses his palms flat against the wall and jumps, turning around mid-air so he’s sitting on it, his back to the city lights.

“Oh my god, get back down here,” Joshua says, eyes widening.

“I’m not gonna fall,” Jeonghan jokes.

“You can’t know that,” Joshua leans over the wall and looks down, seemingly assessing exactly how dead Jeonghan would be if he fell backwards.

“I’m being careful,” Jeonghan swings his feet back and forth because he’s an asshole.

A gust of wind sweeps in and messes up Jeonghan’s hair. He throws his head back and closes his eyes, swings his legs again, and Joshua probably thinks the wind is strong enough to push Jeonghan back to his death, so he hurriedly takes a step closer and places his hands on the wall, one on each side of Jeonghan. As if he’s making sure that he’s close enough to grab him in case he does fall backwards.

“Jeonghan,” he says, voice strained like he’s serious and if Jeonghan doesn’t get down, he’ll maybe pick him up and remove him off the wall himself.

“You’ll call, right?” Jeonghan answers. He doesn’t mean to say that, but the wind has eroded the armor he was keeping all his worries under.

“If you overbalance and fall back and end up plastered to the sidewalk like a cartoon character then there’ll be no one to call, and also Jihoon will be suspect number one, so can you get off there already?”

“Look,” says Jeonghan, because it doesn’t matter if Joshua is currently on a different page, Jeonghan already got started, and if he doesn’t finish, the words might just get stuck in his throat and kill him. “I’m sorry. Um. I’ve never had someone leave. Not someone I care about. I was like, what do you even do on a last day? Is it just saying goodbye? Because all I could think about was making you want to come back. Things don’t usually go this wrong for me. I had this whole thing planned, you know? And not a single thing went according to plan. I—god, it scares me to think that I—” and he runs out of steam like a deflated 17th century engine, and can’t say anything else. Goddamn, talking is hard. Nothing he just said made sense.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Joshua. 

_It doesn’t matter_. Jeonghan pushes himself off the wall. Not a well thought out move, he realizes when that leaves him trapped between it and Joshua’s body. He’s too close. Joshua’s too close. Jeonghan can feel him despite the fact that they’re not touching.

“Well fuck, Joshua,” he laughs. “You tell a guy you’ve been having stress dreams about how to get him to come back to you and he says it doesn’t matter. You couldn’t let me down easy?”

Was that just a confession? He doesn’t know. It sounded like a confession to him. The thought that what he just said might drastically alter the essence of his friendship with Joshua makes him want to throw up, but well.

Joshua steps closer, effectively pressing Jeonghan against the wall. Jeonghan’s holding his breath.

“You don’t get it,” Joshua says. “Nothing about dealing with you has ever been easy.”

Jeonghan can’t figure out how Joshua knows that he likes to be kissed like this, with hands holding his face and thumbs swiping over his cheekbones. But he knows somehow, and Jeonghan feels feverish and about to burst at the seams. Joshua’s lips are as soft as he refused to imagine them. He’s being so careful with Jeonghan, and at first Jeonghan appreciates it because he really does feel like he might pulverize under Joshua’s touch. 

Joshua pulls away but barely, hovering a millimeter away from Jeonghan’s mouth, and the latter can’t really help himself. He licks a stripe across Joshua’s lips and then presses against them once more, satisfied when they part under the pressure.

Jeonghan remembers that exhibition he went to with Joshua ages ago, where they showed the human body dissected and separated into pieces. He remembers one particular human body that was sliced so onlookers could see inside a human, every little detail they didn’t have access to, now they could see. Maybe he’s crazy, but that’s how Jeonghan feels when Joshua wraps his arms around him and pulls him close and licks the roof of his mouth. He feels stripped bare and disassembled, like Joshua can see everything about him down to his DNA sequence.

“I love you,” Jeonghan says out of breath when he realizes he does, in fact, need something other than Joshua’s lips on his to survive. Namely, oxygen. It’s not the first time he tells Joshua that he loves him, but it is the first time he says it like this, with his heart in his throat threatening to choke him. “You get it, right? Tell me you get it.”

“I know that you love me,” Joshua says, his voice more gentle than usual, like he’s telling Jeonghan a secret. He kisses Jeonghan’s cheekbone, then a little bit lower, and then Jeonghan’s eyes flutter shut when he kisses his lips again, softer than before and only for a few seconds. “Do you love me like this, though?”

“Yes,” he whispers almost against Joshua’s lips, and kisses the corner of his mouth, the one that turns upwards all the time, the one that drives him crazy. “I love you like this,” he says, and then traps Joshua’s bottom lip in between his own, and he feels blood rushing to his head when Joshua sighs against him and wraps his arms around him even tighter.

“Good to know,” Joshua says when he pulls away to breathe, “‘cause, you know. I’ve only loved you like, my whole life.”

Jeonghan has loved him his whole life too, but he is aware that that’s not how Joshua means it. The bats that Jeonghan has had raising hell inside his stomach since that day at the smoothie stand? Joshua has lived with his own for years. It stings to hear it. Jeonghan looks away from Joshua’s face and down at his shoes.

“Don’t say that,” he frowns.

“Why not?” Jeonghan can hear a slight smile in Joshua’s words. “It’s the truth.”

“Because,” he starts, and then hesitates. “Because I could’ve had you my whole life, but now you’re leaving.”

“You have. Had me your whole life. And you’ll have me when I leave and also when I come back. Love’s cool like that, it’s kept me here for over a decade,” replies Joshua, and Jeonghan softly punches his chest with the hand he had spread out over it.

“Yeah? I’m in love and it’s hell, nothing cool about it.”

Joshua laughs at that, shoulders shaking, and then removes his hands from around Jeonghan’s torso to cup his face, making him look at him again.

“I miss you already.”

Jeonghan feels something liquid and viscous settle somewhere in his bones. He is positively furious, and if it was something else instead of Joshua, he’s almost sure he’d keep himself away from it in a display of pride, in true _it took me so long to realize it that I don’t deserve it_ fashion. But it’s not something else, it’s Joshua, and Jeonghan wants him so badly he can feel it in his teeth.

Jeonghan doesn’t want Joshua to read all of this on his face, though, so all he does is push forward until Joshua’s arms go around his shoulders and down his back. Jeonghan buries his face in his neck and lets himself be held, and thinks about how for now this has to be enough, and about how not enough it is.

.

They’re on the train on their way back to where they left their bikes, and it’s surprisingly full for a sunday evening. Jeonghan usually watches people when he takes the train, he doesn’t really get bored, but this time he has a better form of entertainment.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Joshua says. It’s not easy for him to get embarrassed, Jeonghan knows this. Joshua makes a fool of himself sometimes and acts like nothing happened, and he’s immune to second-hand embarrassment as well. Jeonghan is very aware of this, as he’s found himself envying that ability more than once.

Jeonghan raises his eyebrows and an amused smile starts slowly taking over his face.

“Like what?” he asks. Like a love-smitten fool, that’s how he’s looking at Joshua. He wants to hear it from him, though. 

“You know.”

“But I don’t,” Jeonghan almost giggles. “How was I looking at you, Shua?”

Joshua turns to him, visibly exasperated—visibly to Jeonghan, because to the regular viewer Joshua definitely just looks neutral, but Jeonghan can read him better than anyone—and then, after a few seconds his eyes soften and he says, “Nevermind.” 

It annoys Jeonghan not to know whether he’s getting away with shit because he always gets away with shit, or if it’s because Joshua has—wait for it— _feelings_ for him.

Anyway, things work out against Jeonghan, because then Joshua decides that he can also play dirty, and spends the rest of their time on the train staring Jeonghan down with so much unabashed love that it’s suffocating. It turns into a staring contest. Jeonghan kind of wants to ask every other passenger to leave so he and Joshua can have a moment. He is the first to look away, and when he looks back up there’s a pleased smile on Joshua’s face. 

They get off at their stop, walk over to the place where they parked their bikes and get on them. Jeonghan, because he is fundamentally annoying, grabs branches that hang low over his head as they ride their bikes back to their building, and tries to tickle the back of Joshua’s neck with the leaves because getting a rise out of him is still his favorite pastime.

“There’s something I want to know,” Joshua says, one hand on the handlebar, the other one resting on his thigh while he pedals. Jeonghan abandons his branch. “You weren’t gonna tell me anything. Like if I hadn’t kissed you, you would’ve just let me go without telling me… well, anything.”

“How observant,” Jeonghan says. “You’re right. I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

Joshua remains quiet until they’re parking their bikes.

“So you were just gonna let me go like that, and then what?”

“Then I would’ve contacted you often, and waited for my best friend to come back home. Safest option, yeah?”

Jeonghan just didn’t want to do anything that might’ve pushed Joshua further away than he was already going. In those terms, telling him was high risk. So Jeonghan wasn’t going to.

Joshua unlocks the door and they take off their shoes in silence. Jeonghan doesn’t really know where to go from here, he doesn’t know if he should go back to his room and go to bed, he doesn’t know if he should say something, or kiss Joshua goodnight. He feels like he’s standing on quicksand. Then he remembers Joshua has no actual bedsheets or pillows currently, and that the plan was that Jeonghan would share his bed with him. Right.

“Do me a favor,” Joshua asks, bringing him back to the present moment. “Don’t decide for both of us while I’m gone, okay? I wanna know how you’re feeling.”

Jeonghan doesn’t want to talk about this tonight.

“Fine,” he says. “Since you asked so politely, I’ll let you know right now I really feel like kissing you.”

Joshua takes three long strides towards him, tilts his chin a millimeter up and presses his lips against Jeonghan’s for an instant. 

“Can you be serious for one second?”

“I am,” Jeonghan kisses the stupid corner of his mouth again because he can and it’s right there, and then continues pressing kisses down his jaw. When his lips make contact with the skin of Joshua’s neck, he actually shivers in his arms and Jeonghan feels like the most powerful human in the universe. “Dead serious, actually.”

Joshua chases after his lips again, and Jeonghan lets himself melt into him as much as he can. 

“There’s something I have to give you,” Jeonghan breathes against him.

“Now?” Joshua asks, his fingers pulling on the neckline of Jeonghan’s sweatshirt.

Jeonghan would leave it for tomorrow, and focus on kissing Joshua stupid, but he knows himself, and he knows he’ll forget if he doesn’t.

“Yup.”

He grabs Joshua’s hand and drags him over to his room.

“Did you know some people say empty dorm rooms are liminal spaces?” Jeonghan says. He also planned this out, and he’s hoping it goes well, unlike every other plan he made for the day.

“Are you trying to get me to stay by making me afraid of my future dorm room?” Joshua asks.

“I would’ve done that if I thought it’d work,” Jeonghan says over his shoulder. “Sit.”

He hears Joshua sit on his bed while he rummages through his drawers. 

“So, some people think empty dorm rooms are liminal spaces,” Jeonghan fucking studied this, okay? “‘Cause, y’know, people live there but not _really_. Their stay has a beginning and ending date. It’s not a place where you’re meant to remain, or whatever.”

“I know that,” Joshua says. “The question is, why do _you?_ You don’t believe in that stuff.”

“I don’t. But you do,” Jeonghan turns around and walks towards Joshua, who is now lying down on his back, and then lets his present fall directly on Joshua’s stomach, knocking the air out of him.

Joshua flips him off and calls him a dickhead before sitting up and taking the present in his hands.

“So, um. I asked your mom, and she said you make liminal spaces feel less like liminal places by making them feel homey. You know, filling them with familiar things, making them seem like—”

“Like they’re lived in,” Joshua finishes, having opened the photobook that Jeonghan had just dropped on him, and staring intently at the first picture.

It’s from New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago. Jeonghan wears a headband that says HAPPY and Joshua wears one that says YEAR. Jeonghan doesn’t remember who was wearing the one that said NEW, but that’s not the point. They’re smiling at the camera with their heads tilted towards each other, their headbands coming together to read HAPPY YEAR. 

Jeonghan takes a seat next to Joshua and swallows before continuing. 

“I figured you could use those as decorations and they’d make you feel closer to home. Also, this is definitely a collaborative effort. Your mom and my mom helped, but I did tell them I was gonna take full credit for it and they didn’t seem bothered. So yeah. Study abroad present from me. If you’re ever feeling down you can look at my handsome face plastered all over your walls. They say looking at beautiful things makes people feel better.”

Jeonghan is hoping to be annoying enough that it breaks the tension, but when Joshua thanks him and his voice comes out soft and full of a million things that Jeonghan doesn’t want to examine too closely in case he breaks into tears, he notices he wasn’t successful.

Then there are fingers on his jaw and Joshua’s kissing him again, brimming with unsaid things.

“You have a long day tomorrow,” he says after Joshua swipes his tongue across the roof of his mouth.

“Yeah,” replies Joshua, and then pushes Jeonghan onto his back, licks into his mouth again.

“You should rest.” Jeonghan slides his hands under Joshua’s T-shirt.

“Yeah.” Joshua rolls over and pulls Jeonghan on top of him.

Jeonghan learns that sex is different when it’s with someone you’re in love with, when that someone knows you inside out, when their soul is tangled with yours, when he’s your best friend in the world and his name is Joshua Hong.

If Jeonghan wanted to be famous, if he wanted to be known for one thing out of all the things he can do, he’d want to be known as the one person to figure out every single coordinate on Joshua’s body that he can press his lips against to make him squirm. There are several. Hip bones. Clavicle. The inside of his thighs. Jeonghan doesn’t know how humanity has survived without this knowledge, all at once it’s incredibly up there among the things that he considers crucial. Others may have found all of this out before, but Jeonghan is more than happy to completely erase them from history. This is his now, he thinks as he kisses over Joshua’s clavicle again. He will never share it with anyone. If it was knowledge that could save the world, well, they’d simply have to find another way.

Another big discovery is that Jeonghan wants to spend probably the rest of his life making Joshua sigh his name. Joshua’s voice is pulled out of his chest with a rumble first, then it thins out into its usual sweet lilt, and then it sublimates into a sigh. It makes Jeonghan feel like someone started a bushfire that spreads across every fiber of his body. It’s maddening, the image of Joshua panting under him, the muscles of his stomach clenched tight, his chest rising and falling, his lips the perfect shade of dark pink and swollen from being bitten on by both himself and Jeonghan, color on his cheeks, eyes half lidded and beautiful like they’ve always been. His skin is golden everywhere, everywhere except for the purpling spots where Jeonghan has sucked bruises. One of his arms is bent behind his head and the other reaches out to touch whichever part of Jeonghan is closer. 

Jeonghan doesn’t know exactly what, but there’s something intoxicating about knowing Joshua is heavier and stronger than him, and yet Jeonghan gets to see him like this, completely unraveled under his fingertips, keening and moaning for him, opposing no resistance. 

When he moves, Joshua’s eyes flutter closed and he lets out this higher pitched sound, his back arches beautifully off the bed and Jeoghan can physically see his muscles tightening and then releasing, his skin glistens and Jeonghan wants to swallow him whole so much he feels dizzy with it. 

Jeonghan doesn’t know for how long it goes on. He can’t measure it in minutes, but if he cared, he’d try to measure it in love declarations. He’d measure it in the number of sizes his heart grew. He thinks right now it’s a million sizes too big, and as he catches his breath, he pecks Joshua’s lips several times and wonders if this is his default now, if he’s going to have to live his life with his heart constituting over half of his body weight.

Joshua doesn’t let him move away when he tries to stand up to at least get wet wipes. He asks Jeonghan to stay, and the realization that he’ll never in his life be able to say no to Joshua again crashes into him non-violently. So he stays, trapped in the circle of Joshua’s strong arms, and watches him as his breathing evens out. His hand moves up involuntarily to push Joshua’s hair, damp with sweat, away from his face. 

Again, he doesn’t know for how long he stays there, but it’s long enough for him to feel awfully domesticated. It really is ridiculous, he thinks, how he was just thinking about having the upper hand even though Joshua is stronger, and now he’s realizing that if Joshua is involved, he will never have the upper hand, ever. Jeonghan will keep it a secret for the rest of his life, but Joshua could probably get him to do anything just by virtue of being Joshua. Gross.

Jeonghan disentangles himself from Joshua’s limbs to stand up and bring something to wipe him off with. When he finishes, Joshua’s eyes are open. He reaches for him and pulls him in until there’s barely any space between them, and it’s ridiculously warm, way too warm, but Jeonghan would watch the world catch fire before putting a single millimeter in between them.

“Hey,” whispers Joshua.

“Yeah?”

“Do you get it now?”

“What?”

“That grand gestures don’t matter if it’s you. I’ll always come back to you.”

Jeonghan ignores the way his heart clenches to think about how that’s Joshua, earnest and upfront about how he feels and making it sound good, planned out, coherent. Every time Jeonghan talks about his feelings, what comes out is a jumbled mess for whoever is listening to pick apart. Joshua is the opposite. He makes his feelings seem simple, organized and understandable, presents them in the most human of terms.

“Who knew you’d be such a sap,” Jeonghan answers.

“Some of us have to pick up the slack for the people who can’t talk about their feelings without sounding like they’re twelve.”

Jeonghan bites Joshua’s chin. “I take offense at that.”

“Good,” Joshua smiles, and it almost makes Jeonghan forget to snap back at him.

“Yeah? Tell me then, since you’re such a pro. How long did you keep this from me?”

“I already told you,” Joshua rolls his eyes. “Forever.”

“Bullshit,” Jeonghan says, because it’s inconceivable to think of Joshua loving him since that day at the playground.

“Just because you choose to process other people’s feelings instead of your own doesn’t mean I do that too,” Joshua says, and fuck him because he really does know the intricacies of Jeonghan as a person. Joshua could probably write a manual on Jeonghan if he wanted. “I always knew I loved you differently.”

“And you never said anything.”

“Because I knew you didn’t feel the same,” Joshua says, making Jeonghan frown. He shuffles closer, throws his arm around Joshua’s neck and plays with the hair at the back of his head. “It’s fine, though, I wasn’t like, suffering in silence for years. Just being your friend was enough.”

Jeonghan swallows. He’s aware that people experience feelings differently, but he thinks he would’ve gone insane if he had felt like _this_ about Joshua for over a decade.

“I hope you’ve changed your mind cause it sure as hell isn’t enough for me. Not now.”

Joshua laughs and it kicks the air out of Jeonghan’s lungs again. It’s a combination of his eyes narrowing when he smiles and the specific angle of the arch of his eyebrows, the way his nose scrunches, the way he tilts his head back. Jeonghan wants to take a picture of Joshua’s laughing face to superimpose the Fibonacci spiral over it, because he’s sure if he did the math and calculated the angles, he’d find out that it’s like, the aurea proportion, the golden ratio, true beauty or whatever the hell. 

Jeonghan, evidently, knows nothing about proportions or angles or anything. He’s just in way over his head.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you looking at me like that,” Joshua tells him, and Jeonghan averts his gaze and hides his face in Joshua’s neck because it’s embarrassing to get caught staring, especially if you’re staring at someone with adoration.

“Fuck off,” he mumbles against Joshua’s skin, “this is all new to me, okay? When I look at you it feels like I’m being held in one of those professional wrestling chokeholds. Not nice.”

“Melodramatic,” Joshua says, and then kisses Jeonghan’s forehead. “Also, your pillows are so fucking lumpy.”

“Yeah?” Jeonghan scoffs. “No one’s stopping you from sleeping on your bare mattress.”

Joshua ignores him. “I can’t believe out of every pillow in the world these are the ones that satisfy your six hundred requirements.”

“What's wrong with a guy wanting to sleep comfortably?”

Time flows slowly around them, and they bicker until they run out of energy, falling asleep with their limbs completely tangled. When Jeonghan wakes up hours later, the sun is shining through the window, but not in a suffocating way, just nice. He’s warm and comfortable on Joshua’s chest and there are fingers running through his hair and he just feels happy and at ease. 

Except that’s exactly the opposite of what happens.

He does fall asleep to their bickering, half curled into, half on top of Joshua. But he wakes up with seventy-two cricks on his neck because Joshua is not a comfortable pillow, and suffocating because, one, Joshua runs hot; two, it’s still the summer, and three, Joshua thinks he’s an aristocrat so he refuses to sleep without linen pants on. Also, Joshua’s head is on his arm, which means there’s no circulation happening and when he wakes up it’ll be too late and Jeonghan’s arm will be dead and beyond salvation.

“Sleeping on you feels like sleeping on a slab of marble,” he croaks, and proceeds to press kisses to the crown of Joshua's head.

“Good morning to you too,” Joshua says, managing to sound all sweet and honey-like, unlike Jeonghan, whose voice upon waking up is like sandpaper if it turned into a sound. “It’s admirable how you muster up the energy to complain this early in the morning.”

That morning, and that whole day, everything stays the same. Jeonghan brushes his teeth while Joshua washes his face, and then they switch. Joshua makes breakfast for them both, and Jeonghan shoves his hands, freezing from washing them with cold water, up Joshua’s T-shirt. Joshua makes him watch about a million episodes of his ridiculous law show and Jeonghan complains the whole time. Jeonghan drives Joshua places, because Joshua doesn’t drive. Joshua, who cries easier than Jeonghan, cries this time, and Jeonghan doesn’t.

That morning, and that whole day, everything changes. When Jeonghan goes to clip his hair back so it doesn’t get in his face while he’s washing it, Joshua takes the hair clips from him and clips Jeonghan’s hair back himself. Then he kisses Jeonghan’s forehead before leaving the room. After shoving his icicle hands up Joshua’s shirt, Jeonghan laughs against his neck and kisses the back, then the side of it where Joshua has a mole. They don’t watch Joshua’s stupid law show in the living room couch, they watch it curled up in Jeonghan’s bed, and Jeonghan finds other ways to be distracting that don’t involve pausing every two seconds to rant about how much this show sucks. When Jeonghan drives Joshua to the airport, Joshua tangles his fingers with his in the car. 

When Joshua starts crying and it’s not over something stupid that Jeonghan can make fun of—because Joshua cries at stupid things that Jeonghan can make fun of often, like the family in _The Incredibles_ finally finding a healthy dynamic—Jeonghan doesn’t know what to do. 

“Hey, come on. Don’t cry,” he pleads. The children holding onto their parents hands as they step into the security line watch them with huge, interested eyes.

Joshua’s not a scandalous crier. He barely makes noise, just lets the tears fall. It’s very calm and quiet, and Jeonghan finally, after all this time, feels his heart about to shatter into a million pieces. This time he’s not holding back because he’s too busy laughing at the dumb shit Joshua cries over, but because one of them has to.

“Don’t cry,” he says, pulling Joshua close and letting him breathe into his neck. If Jeonghan’s shirt starts feeling damp on the shoulder, then he will do his damn best to completely erase it from his memory. “Your eyes will get swollen, you don’t want that, come on. You already have the swelling from the eternal flight to deal with,” Jeonghan is not above acting like a jerk if it means getting Joshua out of this mood. “Shua, it’s not like I’m dying, and you’re not dying either. Half a year goes by in no time, especially in your old age,” Joshua is younger than Jeonghan, which the latter is well aware of. “I, for one, can’t wait to have the apartment to myself. No one will get mad at me if I hang the toilet paper under instead of over. I won’t trip over your tiny plants that I’m sure you move around at night just so I can trip on them again,” Jeonghan clears his throat because his voice is threatening to crack, and takes a deep breath. “I can have as much loud sex as I please before—”

“You’re _such_ an asshole,” Joshua pinches the back of his arm, but that’s laughter in his wet voice, and Jeonghan feels relief wash over him. “I never get mad at you, I just fix the toilet paper myself. And I never move the plants, you just have shit memory.”

Joshua takes a minuscule step back, just far enough to look Jeonghan in the eyes.

“I’m not about to jump into bed with other people, that was a joke,” Jeonghan feels the need to clarify.

“I know.”

“You know how the lady with the hand magic said I’d wait for you? It’s true. I will.”

“I know,” Joshua shuffles close again, rests his forehead on Jeonghan's shoulder, and then turns his head slightly to the side to press a kiss against Jeonghan’s neck. Jeonghan hides his own kiss behind Joshua’s ear, where no one but him can find it.

“Text when you land.”

“Yup,” something changes in Joshua’s tone. “Promise.”

Jeonghan exhales, and it feels like it releases half of the things he has tied inside.

“Safe flight,” he says when Joshua steps away for good. “Love you.”

Joshua smiles at him, and Jeonghan stares on and commits the curl of his lips to memory like Joshua’s going on a space expedition for fifty years or some shit. It’s stupid and irrational but Jeonghan still does it. 

“Love you more.”

Jeonghan turns around and starts walking. He sets the _Until I can stop missing Joshua_ timer to six months. Six months to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> joshua doesn't take his plants with him, he leaves them with his good friend xu minghao because he knows jeonghan can barely take care of himself, let alone another living being.
> 
> thanks for waiting and thanks for reading. i'd love to know what u all thought of this chapter!
> 
> i'm @hug_mp3 on twt and cc if u wanna drop by.
> 
> <3


	3. time x time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeonghan waits, wants, and learns about having time.

Jeonghan gets to live the pixelated, 144p quality, "weak connection" version of Joshua's life across the world. He knows what his pixelated apartment looks like, knows there is one shared bedroom, but also a kitchen and a minuscule living room. Jeonghan has seen the pixelated version of Joshua's roommate's shoe rack, which is organized according to an incomprehensible color index. The roommate also has a toaster that burns stormtroopers onto the toast, which Joshua finds fascinating. He has seen multiple iterations of Joshua's pixelated frown because he keeps banging his hip against the kitchen counter's very inconvenient sharp edge. Joshua says he now has a bruise that never goes away.

The connection is actually fine when Joshua is in the apartment, Jeonghan just loves exaggerating. The real problem comes when Joshua tries to introduce him to his new coffee shop of choice, or to the lake close to the dorms that has a single tree in front of it on the accessible side of the shore, or to the vending machines that don’t have milk tea. Jeonghan has to hang up when the lake and the tree start looking like Minecraft creations. Jeonghan has never played Minecraft, but he's also not completely clueless.

Jeonghan meets Hansol, Joshua’s roommate, in probably the most embarrassing way you could ever meet another human. He’s on Facetime with Joshua, watching him finish unpacking and taping the pictures Jeonghan gave him to the wall. Jeonghan offers unnecessary criticism that Joshua completely ignores, things like _The colors don’t match in that order_ and so on, and when Joshua remains entirely unresponsive, Jeonghan gets bored and steers the conversation elsewhere.

“How’s your roommate? Did he finish unpacking his stuff already?”

“Yeah. He’s nice.”

“Have you guys taken the roommate compatibility test?”

“You just made that up,” Joshua says, unsticking a picture to tape it somewhere else.

Jeonghan did just make it up, but he’s sure if he cared enough to google it, he'd find something. “You should take it, you know? Make sure he’s not gonna harvest your organs while you sleep.”

“You're telling me the test has a question about connections to the black market.”

“Maybe not. But it might make you aware of weird behavior. Does he have jars with gross things floating in liquid? A creepy doll collection? In what order does he wet the toothbrush and put toothpaste on it? Is he a milk before cereal person?” Yes, Jeonghan has thought extensively about this. “Milk before cereal people need to be watched out for, but they’ll probably be okay in the end. The toothpaste thing doesn’t matter _unless_ he tells you that he doesn’t wet the toothbrush at all. If he says that, run.”

At this point, Joshua has abandoned the pictures and is looking at Jeonghan through the screen like he’s gone insane. But hey, he’s looking at Jeonghan again, so Jeonghan would say the Regain Joshua’s Attention mission was a success. "Those are all things that I can see, I don't need a test." Then he smiles, and Jeonghan has a millisecond to identify that smile as the one that means trouble when Joshua says, “But you can ask him yourself, if you're so concerned.”

Then he turns his laptop around and Jeonghan is face to face with a boy with dark brown hair and huge eyes sitting on a bed across the room, and looking extremely uncomfortable. With just a semi-pixelated glance, Jeonghan knows immediately that he wouldn’t hurt a fly. And of course Joshua wasn’t wearing earphones, which means the kid heard every single thing Jeonghan said, not only about him being a potential organ harvester, but also _everything else_ , like Jeonghan's preferred song to hum when Joshua isn't paying attention to him. The boy might as well join their relationship at this point. Jeonghan can hear Joshua laughing behind the screen and he swears he’s gonna kill him, _Jesus_.

“Hi,” the kid says, waving his hand in the most awkward way Jeonghan has ever seen a human wave before. “I’m Hansol. I’m not gonna harvest your boyfriend’s organs. I’m down to take the compatibility test if it’ll help you feel more comfortable.”

“Oh my god,” Jeonghan’s face is in his hands and his fingers are pressing against his closed eyes. “Nevermind, you look twelve.”

And that’s how Jeonghan meets Hansol, who he is forced to become friends with because Joshua will pick up Jeonghan’s calls from his laptop, and then when he has to go check on the food or open the door or whatever, he’ll say, “Talk to Hansol for a bit,” and Jeonghan will be left figuring out what to talk to him about. He's nice, though, maybe a little bit weird but that's his charm, and Jeonghan would dare to say they establish a good relationship. Jeonghan now understands the mysterious shoe color index. Hansol now texts him random candid pictures of Joshua sometimes.

Overall, Jeonghan thinks it's weird how he becomes familiar with so many different areas of Joshua's life abroad, when he's not even familiar with Joshua as a romantic interest. He becomes friends with Hansol and gets to know him as a human being better than he gets to know Joshua as his boyfriend, and he doesn't even know if that's better or worse. Is it better or worse that he doesn’t know how Joshua would react if Jeonghan kissed him to shut him up when he's complaining about the lack of vending machine milk tea? Better, Jeonghan thinks, because if he doesn’t know, he can’t miss it. Worse, he thinks, because there’s no existing comforting memory of it.

It’s okay, though, Jeonghan thinks. He can deal with Joshua’s pixelated smile for half a year. It’s not like he doesn’t remember the exact angle at which the corners of his lips curl up.

What makes it difficult is that Jeonghan had not realized how deeply ingrained Joshua is in every single area of his existence. Joshua is his boyfriend, his best friend, the person who cooks at home, his study partner, his reminder to stay hydrated, and also his caretaker when Jeonghan is sick. Which fucking sucks, because Jeonghan gets a cold that doesn't seem to be going away, and he's starting to believe that Joshua's presence heals illness. He tells Seungkwan about his hypothesis, and Seungkwan says that it’s not that Joshua has healing powers, but that Jeonghan has thrived off of being the recipient of Joshua’s attention since the day they met. Jeonghan then convinces himself that Joshua _actually_ has healing powers out of stubbornness.

Either way, Jeonghan fails miserably at trying to replicate the warm drink that his mom used to make for him when he got sick as a kid, and Seungkwan refuses to even try to replicate the one his own family made because, his words, it tastes like stale salt water. Also, Jeonghan doesn't want to worry Joshua, who took over the production of magical, healing beverages for the ill—the ill being Jeonghan—when they started college. So Jeonghan lies down with his head pounding and waits for death.

He’s trying to sleep his headache away one night when Joshua calls—it’s night for Jeonghan, morning for Joshua. Jeonghan wakes up, picks up the phone, and proceeds to cough into it for a million years, after which there’s obviously no hiding that he’s sick.

“Where’s Seungkwan?” Joshua asks once Jeonghan stops coughing. To a stranger, Joshua would sound calm. Jeonghan is not a stranger, so he can hear the concern in his voice, and yeah, this is exactly what he didn’t want.

“He has group work to do. Has been staying out late these past few days because he doesn't wanna bring people here while I’m sick with the black plague.”

The mental image of Joshua rolling his eyes at him is somehow comforting. “If I talk you through making soup, will you do it?”

“I might die if I get out of bed,” replies Jeonghan. Joshua already knows that he’s sick, there’s no point in Jeonghan trying to be less dramatic than he usually is.

Joshua changes the topic then, which allows Jeonghan to melt into his voice and distract himself from the fact that his throat fucking hurts and his head feels like it’s filled with cotton. He doesn't know how much time passes, he just knows that Joshua is getting ready for class, and then Jeonghan's doorbell rings, effectively drilling holes into his brain through his ears.

“Just in time,” says Joshua, who’s about to leave his apartment. “I need you to do one thing for me. Get the door, okay?”

“Oh no, what did you do?”

“My best,” he laughs into the phone. Jeonghan wants him _here_. “Get it, alright? I gotta go. Enjoy. And call me when you wake up. Love you.”

“Okay. Me too.”

Then Joshua hangs up, and Jeonghan is getting up and using what’s left of his energy to drag himself over to the door. What he expects is Joshua to have ordered takeout for him, because Jeonghan told him the idea of staring at his phone screen for long enough to pick a meal and order it made him want to pass away. What he doesn’t expect is to find one Lee Jihoon standing outside his door to deliver it.

There are several things off with the visual. Jihoon does have a bike, as in a motorcycle—he’s holding his helmet under one arm—but he doesn’t deliver food as a job. And also, Jihoon looks nice. Like, _I’m not out exclusively to bring you dinner_ nice. 

“Surprise,” Jihoon says, handing over a heavy paper bag. Jeonghan hasn’t seen him in a good while, he realizes. “Your _boyfriend_ texted. Said you were dying and needed a care package, so here I am.”

Jeonghan looks into the bag while he thinks of what to say. He doesn’t think he told anyone other than Seungkwan that he’s dating Joshua. It’s not a secret, he just forgot, and also, he feels weird announcing that type of stuff. From the way Jihoon said it, Jeonghan knows he’s not upset. Just letting Jeonghan know, and maybe mocking him a little bit.

“You brought me soup?”

“And meds and vitamins. There’s also sports drinks in there, I thought maybe you were dehydrated.” It’s so nice of him, and Jeonghan is so sick and exhausted that it almost makes him want to cry.

“Did you eat already?” Jeonghan is aware that it’s equal parts his and Jihoon’s fault that they haven’t contacted each other lately, but he still feels bad. “I can order food if you haven’t.” _Wanna eat with me?_ is what Jeonghan means but doesn’t say.

“I’ll take a raincheck,” Jihoon frowns. Jeonghan raises an eyebrow. “I’m kind of—” Jihoon thinks hard for a few seconds, clearly trying to figure out if he can slip away without explaining himself, and then sighs when he realizes no, he can’t. He’s opening his mouth to spit out whatever he’s holding back, when someone else joins him in the corridor.

“These must’ve slipped out of the bag,” says Kwon Soonyoung, helmet in one hand, plastic jar of vitamins in the other. “Hi, Jeonghan.”

“Hey,” Jeonghan answers, and he feels a smile spread across his face when he looks back at Jihoon, who is taking the vitamins from Soonyoung and handing them to Jeonghan, all while avoiding looking him in the eye. Jeonghan leans against the doorframe. This is hilarious. If Jeonghan was less sick, he’d be giggling. “You took Soonyoung on a date to the pharmacy?”

“He doesn’t mind,” says Jihoon.

“I don’t mind,” says Soonyoung at the same time. Then he adds, “We were on our way back. Had to stop there anyway.”

Jeonghan _does_ laugh at that. He lets his head fall against the doorframe and laughs away. Jihoon’s ears are bright red. To think that he tried to _accuse_ Jeonghan of not telling him he had a boyfriend.

“This is stupid,” Jihoon rolls his eyes in exasperation. Soonyoung reaches over and rests his hand on the back of his neck. It’s welcome there, Jeonghan realizes when Jihoon doesn’t flinch away. 

“We have a lot to catch up on,” Jeonghan tells him through laughter.

“Seems like we do,” Jihoon smiles at him, still kind of embarrassed but trying his best to get over it.

“I’m gonna go eat my soup before it gets cold,” Jeonghan decides that he’s feeling benevolent and won’t torture Jihoon any longer.

“Yeah, do that. And text if you need anything,” he says. So sweet. Jeonghan misses him, he realizes.

“Will do. Thank you.” Jihoon shakes his head. "You kids have fun. Be safe.”

Jihoon rolls his eyes again, and then he’s pushing Soonyoung towards the stairs.

Jeonghan takes two pills and swallows them down with water, then sits down at the table to eat while thinking about how maybe, just maybe, the reason he got sick is that he keeps forgetting to turn off the air conditioner—Joshua used to be the one in charge. But also, if he really thinks about it, Joshua is the reason he now has meds, sports drinks, and soup at arms reach, and he's also the reason Jeonghan now has material to annoy Jihoon with. In conclusion, Seungkwan can't tell him anything if he decides to maintain his outlandish theory that Joshua is his own personal healing charm.

The thing is, there is some degree of truth to it. Talking to Joshua, having him around, making him laugh, it all makes Jeonghan feel good, it makes his days better. Consequently, when they start talking less, and when they start having less time, and when things get more complicated, Jeonghan feels the absence like someone scooped up his insides with one of those round ice cream spoons and left him empty and sunken.

Long distance is hard, and Jeonghan knew it would be since that day Joshua kissed him on the rooftop of Jihoon’s building. So if he knew that, there’s no rational explanation for the emotional turmoil he goes through. Seungkwan says that the fact that he was expecting it doesn’t mean he’s exempted from actually experiencing it, which doesn’t make Jeonghan feel any better.

See, overall, what Jeonghan is is busy. It’s midterms week, he has a million things to get done and there’s not enough time, his manager keeps asking for him to cover other people’s shifts, and he can’t find a way around the case he was assigned at his internship. He's kind of running on caffeine and an unhealthily small amount of sleep, which turns him into twice the asshole he usually is, and that means he snaps at Seungkwan more than once. He immediately apologizes, and Seungkwan immediately forgives him, but the guilt still eats him alive. To top it all off, time zones and complicated schedules make it hard for him to talk to Joshua. Their busy weeks somehow coincide, so if they do talk, it's usually tired, half-asleep conversations.

Jeonghan comes to understand that for him, Joshua has always been a constant. When things don’t seem to be going right, Jeonghan always gets to go home and see him, and he’s an anchor. He’s a reminder that there are things that remain every day, and that he can hold on to those when everything around him seems to be spinning out of control. Throughout Jeonghan’s life Joshua has always been the eye of the hurricane. Now, Joshua is spinning around with everything else, and Jeonghan doesn’t know what to hold onto in order not to get sucked in. The fact that they barely talk these days makes Jeonghan feel the distance that separates them like something tangible. It feels like Joshua is in a different plane, a different dimension that Jeonghan doesn't have the tools to unlock.

Joshua makes it alive out of his rough weeks, but Jeonghan's don't seem to be coming to an end. It makes it worse, because Jeonghan becomes aware of how hard Joshua tries, of the effort that he makes to steer them in the right direction. He tries to call when Jeonghan is the least busy, texts even if Jeonghan hasn't replied, does his best to keep Jeonghan involved. And Jeonghan feels like a dick, becaue he's exhausted and in a terrible mood, and if he snapped at Joshua on the phone he would have to change his name and self-exile to the Himalayas in shame and guilt. Therefore, instead of ruining Joshua's good mood and his newly acquired freedom, Jeonghan lets his phone keep ringing, cuts conversations short, he says he'll return calls later and texts saying he's busy, because he’d rather seem apathetic than outright rude, and he'd rather get his head out of his ass on his own than ask for help and burden Joshua. In other words, Joshua already has enough on his plate, he doesn't need to carry Jeonghan's baggage too.

This is why Jeonghan needs outsider opinions, he thinks when the whole thing snowballs, because trying to keep Joshua unaware of everything he’s dealing with just makes Jeonghan miss him more. He doesn’t know if Joshua is doing any better in that regard. His logic tells him that Joshua is used to loving him from afar, having done that for most of his life, but Jeonghan is not used to loving someone from a distance. His logic is usually flawed when it comes to matters like this one, though.

When he gets a message from Joshua that just says _are we ok?_ , he knows he’s let it go on for too long. Reading it is like falling into a pool of freezing cold water, and the ice in his lungs makes him come to his senses. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, Joshua not to notice how distant he’s been? It’s idiotic. Of course he should’ve talked to him from the beginning, Joshua even asked him not to keep things from him. Jeonghan always tries to deal with things on his own, but this isn’t only about him. He feels small and guilty, and, in true Jeonghan fashion, he flees before the avalanche that has been creeping down the mountainside can swallow him whole.

Except he doesn’t. Because Joshua deserves better. And Jeonghan wants to be the “better” that Joshua deserves.

So he doesn’t text back. Instead, he sets his alarm an hour earlier, and calls Joshua with sweaty hands and his heart beating at the speed of light. He belatedly realizes that Joshua is probably in class. But no, Joshua picks up from his bed, hair everywhere, wearing a gray sweatshirt that belongs to Jeonghan. Jeonghan could write a list of the criminal offenses he’d be willing to commit if that meant he could be there, sharing Joshua’s single bed with their arms and legs tangled. It’s something about the stupid gray sweatshirt. It makes Jeonghan crave physicality, the weight and warmth of a body.

“You’re up early,” Joshua says, and he sounds like he’s lived six lives. So tired, his voice so colorless.

“I wanted to call,” Jeonghan shrugs. “Is Hansol around?”

Joshua shakes his head. “He has class until late today.”

“Ah. I thought you might be in class too.”

“I should be. Didn’t feel like it.”

Jeonghan’s heart sinks. He knew he had messed up, but having visual evidence in front of him makes the guilt expand like a spilled liquid. Joshua remains quiet, and Jeonghan knows that this is his own problem to solve. No waiting for Joshua to bring it up, _he_ has to take that step.

“How are you?” Jeonghan starts. He never claimed to be good at it. In fact, he claims to severely suck at it.

“I’m…” the tiny frown that appears between Joshua’s brows when he’s thinking shows up. “Confused.”

“Right. Okay. Um, I’m gonna say a lot of things, okay? And then you tell me what you think about those things.” Joshua nods, bending his arm and resting his head on it. “Okay. Here we go.”

Jeonghan starts from the beginning. He trips over his words a billion times, which, he already feels like an incompetent and inexperienced child doing this, there was no need for all of that. He tells Joshua about having terrible week after terrible week, about not wanting him to worry, about keeping his distance so as to not ruin Joshua’s mood or his experience abroad in any way, about how much worse that made him miss Joshua, about keeping that to himself as well for the same reason… About being a millimeter away from his own breaking point.

“I’m,” he swallows. His mouth is dry now. “I’m more tired than ever. It’s not an excuse, but it’s—an explanation? Of sorts. I didn’t realize I was doing exactly what I didn’t want to do. It’s been awful lately. I miss you so much.” It's Jeonghan’s first time saying that out loud. “You should know that. And also that I’m sorry. I made you worry.”

Speaking, Jeonghan thinks, feels like running an obstacle race. Jumping over the first few obstacles isn’t easy, but he manages. By the end, his legs won't come up off the ground. His sentences are short and clipped. He wouldn’t be able to get another word out if he tried. 

“I don’t get how you’re so comfortable with being a nuisance at every moment _except_ the ones where it’s okay, even encouraged to be a nuisance,” the frown doesn’t seem to be leaving Joshua’s face. His voice is soft like always, but there’s an edge to it. Annoyance, Jeonghan thinks, but the type that you feel when you’ve had to tell a child the same thing one hundred times and they’re still not getting it. “You act like I don't know all of this about you. What are you scared of? I've known you my whole life, you think I don't know how huge of a dickhead you can be?" and ah. That's one thing that Jeonghan's brain had convenienty decided to keep out of the picture. "It’s okay to need people. It’s okay not to be able to do everything by yourself. It’s not gonna kill you to ask for help,” _wrong,_ Jeonghan’s inner voice interrupts. It always feels like he might die if he asks for help. “Stop acting like you have it all figured out. You don’t. I’m here to figure it out with you. How do I get that through your thick skull, hm?”

Joshua’s not mad at him. He's annoyed because Jeonghan is an idiot, but he's not mad. Something inside Jeonghan uncoils. It feels like relief.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’ll ask. Promise.”

“Good. Now _I’m_ gonna say a lot of things, and you’re gonna listen,” Joshua says. “I miss you all the time. But I can give you a list of a million other things that I also miss. I miss our apartment. I miss cooking for you. I miss the kitchen drawer that doesn’t fully close, the ramen restaurant down the block, and the ATM that says it’s out of service even though we know it’s not. I also miss the microwave clock that’s two hours and three minutes behind.” Joshua takes a deep breath. “Jeonghan, you’re my immediate link to all of these things. So please, please don’t cut me off.”

And god, does Jeonghan feel like the smallest, most despicable being in the whole entire universe. He feels selfish. Self-centered. Egocentric. A hundred different synonyms of the word. Jeonghan misses Joshua, but Jeonghan is home. Joshua _isn’t._ Jeonghan is the only person who can bridge that gap, and by keeping his distance he had chosen not to. 

“Joshua,” he starts, “I’m—”

“No more apologizing. I already forgave you. And I know you’re busy. A five minute call while I make coffee in the morning makes my day, though. Just so you know.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Joshua smiles at him. Jeonghan feels feather light and like he weighs six tons at the same time. This is the most tired and the most at peace he’s felt in a while. “Wanna tell me about your week?”

Jeonghan snorts. “Not really.” 

“What do you want, then?” 

_I want to fall asleep with you_ , Jeonghan imagines himself saying. Maybe one day he’ll be able to. He wants to say it, but only if he can make it count. As in, not when there’s an ocean in between them. He swears, it’s the stupid gray sweatshirt.

“I wanna hear about your week,” Jeonghan says instead. He could sleep for another twenty minutes, or he could let himself get lost in Joshua’s pretty eyes while he watches him speak. It’s the easiest choice he makes that day.

Things go back to normal, Jeonghan's schedule clears out, the sweltering heat decides to stop terrorizing the population, and all of a sudden it's his birthday week.

Jeonghan doesn’t care much for his birthday, so it doesn’t really matter that much to him that it’s the first one he’s spending without Joshua in like, over a decade. He kind of just wants to spend the day in bed, since he doesn’t have class on Friday and he doesn’t have work on Saturday, because he indirectly let his manager know that he was going to hell if he made Jeonghan work on his birthday weekend.

Joshua texts him exactly at midnight, and Jeonghan misses it because he’s dead asleep. He wakes up a million hours later to a message that is short, sweet, and to the point, which makes his chest hurt a little. There are also texts from his friends and family. Jihoon sends him a coupon for a disproportionate amount of fried chicken that he emphasizes they are supposed to eat together. Hansol sends him about twenty previously unseen pictures of Joshua and a message that just says _hbd_. 

Unexpectedly, Seungkwan makes food for Jeonghan. It’s out of character because Seungkwan doesn’t really cook. When Jeonghan walks into the kitchen after washing up—yes, he wakes up at lunch time—and sees the plates set on the table, the first thing he thinks is that it’s so nice of Seungkwan to make him his favorite food on his birthday. He must’ve looked up a recipe, because the only person Jeonghan knows who makes good Western style pasta is Joshua—there are always too many cooking competition shows on his Netflix home page—and this tastes really good. Then Jeonghan thinks maybe that’s not a coincidence. 

“Did Joshua make you do this?”

“Fuck,” says Seungkwan. “I told him if you didn’t notice, I would take credit for the whole thing.”

“Of course I was gonna notice.”

“That’s what he said too,” Seungkwan rolls his eyes. “Anyways, happy birthday. Many happy returns. If it’s not good then act like it is, I followed Joshua’s instructions to the best of my abilities. I also can’t believe your favorite food is fucking spaghetti, but I digress.”

Jeonghan laughs. “Thanks, Seungkwan.”

To: Joshua

come here and eat with me

From: Joshua

it’s almost 2am here just pretend seungkwan is me

To: Joshua

should i kiss kwan on the mouth then

From: Joshua

that’s up to u

When Jeonghan reluctantly puts on sweatpants and walks downstairs to get a package from Joshua that afternoon, he’s met with a box larger than he was expecting. A small dog could probably fit in it. He brings it upstairs and opens it, and the first thing he sees is a small envelope. What slips out of the envelope first is a printed picture. In it Jeonghan is smiling very awkwardly at the camera, so much so that it reminds him of the way Hansol smiles sometimes. He’s visibly very, very, embarrassed, face flushed pink and everything. In front of him sits a piece of cardboard-tasting red velvet cake.

 _This is my favorite picture of you_ , reads the letter that comes out of the envelope next, _because it’s the first time you ever acted in a way that made me think maybe my feelings weren’t totally unreciprocated._

Jeonghan lets time stop to read the rest of the letter, feeling a volcano erupting inside his chest. Love feels like that, he thinks. It spills wherever it wants and melts everything to the ground.

 _Forever yours_ is how Joshua signs the letter. Jeonghan feels it, really, the spirit of a 19th century woman reading letters from her beloved who went overseas to find the cure for a strange disease. He feels it inside him, a reminder of how ridiculous and minuscule and in love he is. Tragic.

Inside the box there is what seems like a whole lot of very soft fabric. Jeonghan pulls it out assuming it’s a blanket, but it actually takes the shape of—Jeonghan can’t think of a name. It’s a sweater 10 times his size and made of blanket fabric. Basically a thick, warm blanket with sleeves, a hole to put your head through, and a hood. ( _PS - Since I’m not there for you to leech body warmth off of me, I thought this could help during the winter. Stay warm._ )

Jeonghan doesn’t leech off of Joshua, he thinks as he sticks his head through the hole in the sweater blanket. He just gets cold easily, normal blankets slip off his shoulders when he’s on his computer working, and big coats are too uncomfortable. So he usually sits next to Joshua because he’s like a furnace. Jeonghan finishes putting on the sweater blanket, hood up and everything, and realizes it’s soft and comfortable and he could sleep for a million years in one of these. He lifts up his phone at an angle, snaps a picture, and sends it to Joshua. 

_New lockscreen_ , reads the text that arrives hours later, and Jeonghan has to use one hundred percent of his brain power to make the letters focus in front of him. He’s wearing his glasses, though, so the only explanation is that Jeonghan is on his way to being very, very drunk. Probably already there. See, Seungkwan had dragged him out of the apartment after class and taken him to Jihoon’s place. Jeonghan thought they were gonna eat the disproportionate amount of fried chicken that Jihoon had bought, but the place was actually full of people celebrating the fact that Jeonghan was getting older. Funny.

There’s no need to describe the series of events that led Jeonghan here, all that matters is that his head is on Jihoon’s shoulder and that, he just found out, he has an eighth drunk personality. It’s a mix of the third one, Obnoxiously Whiny Jeonghan, the seventh, Overly Honest Jeonghan, and a new element previously dormant: Missing his Boyfriend Jeonghan. If there was someone at the party who didn’t know about Joshua, Jeonghan made sure they left with extensive knowledge about him. He practically assaulted every person who was not busy with the karaoke machine. 

Now he’s leaning on Jihoon’s shoulder, head swimming, because Jihoon actually listens to every single thing he has to say. In reality, it’s because Jihoon thinks Jeonghan has either embarrassed himself or annoyed whoever was listening enough for one night.

Seungkwan and Jeonghan are the last to leave, Seungkwan dragging him away before he could really get into the lecture he was giving Soonyoung on how to take care of and be good to a certain Lee Jihoon. Who is, by the way, standing right there next to Soonyoung. Jeonghan is rambling about Jihoon having a heart made of crystal, or something, way louder than is socially acceptable at about three in the morning. Seungkwan ushers him away and somehow maneuvers him back into their own apartment. 

Once Seungkwan has made him drink enough water, Jeonghan gets in bed and does the only thing he can think of. Which is not to fall asleep, but to videocall Joshua. 

“Hi,” Joshua says.

“Hi,” Jeonghan drags out the “I” more than strictly necessary. “Are you busy?”

“No, I have class late,” Joshua says. Jeonghan knows that Joshua knows he’s drunk because Jeonghan doesn’t slur, but his voice gets all this funny inflection. “How was the party?”

“Fun,” Jeonghan decides after careful consideration. “Someone mixed this blue drink? It was so sweet. Imagine blueberry soju, but actually blue. I think I had too many of those, my tongue’s all blue. Wanna see?”

He’s sticking out his tongue before Joshua answers.

“I’m glad you had fun.”

“Yeah.” Jeonghan swallows. Concentrating is hard. He kind of wants to fall asleep right now, but there’s something he was planning on saying. “I had something to tell you. Wait, um. Oh, yes. My gray sweatshirt, the big one. It’s my favorite on you.” 

“Thank you.” Jeonghan might be drunk but he knows Joshua is being patient, and also probably waiting for Jeonghan to embarrass himself. “I’m not gonna give it back, so I’m glad you feel that way.”

“That’s okay.” It’s Jeonghan’s most comfortable sweatshirt, but he thinks it’s okay. “Because it’s my favorite on you,” he repeats.

“Got it,” Joshua says, and he’s smiling at Jeonghan, and Jeonghan feels himself about to let out a dreamy sigh. If being in love makes him feel dumb usually, being in love and also drunk makes him feel thrice as stupid, but also unexplicably brave. “That’s what you wanted to tell me?”

“No,” Jeonghan swallows again. “Hm. You know how you sent me that picture? And you said that’s when you thought maybe I liked you? Back?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Well, I thought you should know—think, I still think you should know that it was way before. Remember when I went to the smoothie stand?”

“You went to the smoothie stand, like, three times a week, Jeonghan.”

“I did do that, the smoothies were good,” Jeonghan frowns. _Concentrate_. “The first time I went. When you got the job.”

“Yeah.”

“... Yeah.”

Joshua starts laughing. “That’s it? You saw the smoothie stand for the first time and it occurred to you?”

“Don’t go judgemental on me,” Jeonghan almost feels offended. “You were wearing a tank top or something. Shirt with no sleeves.”

“I’d worn those in front of you several times!” Joshua’s voice is nice when it’s laced with laughter, Jeonghan thinks. “I literally walked around the apartment shirtless.”

“I said stop judging me!” Jeonghan whines. “My brain was slime after that moment. I had to go to Seungkwan for help.”

“You’re so ridiculous.” Joshua concludes. Jeonghan wants to pull him through the phone screen and kiss him silly. He’s sure there’s a song about that.

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Jeonghan clears his throat. He feels more sober, and also more tired. “Anyway, that’s my offering. Food for thought, hm? And make sure to really think about it because? I’ll be unresponsive for the three days it’ll take me to deal with this hangover.”

“You work on Sunday.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me."

Jeonghan closes his eyes and feels himself drifting away almost immediately. He doesn’t know if he imagines Joshua saying _Goodnight, love_ , or if he really says it.

That's one thing Jeonghan gets used to: not knowing whether Joshua really says something over the phone, or if Jeonghan's subconscious comes up with it while he sleeps. He doesn't ask because the idea of saying the question out loud makes him feel stupid and embarrassed. So he just deals with it, and guesses if Joshua is not saying it, then at least his own unconscious mind knows what he wants to hear.

Another thing he gets used to is the fact that having a healthy long-distance sex life is a myth. 

He is, once again, exaggerating. 

The problem is, him and Joshua had sex a grand total of one time before Joshua left. So on top of having to go on a journey of sexual discovery like everyone does when they change partners, they have to do it while in different continents.

Jeonghan can list some of the things he has learned about long-distance sex and surrounding topics. 

First, sexting sucks. It’s mind-numbingly boring. Probably only for people who actually have enough brain capacity during sex to think of and type out full, coherent sentences. Jeonghan is not that, and Joshua is as far from it as it gets. 

Second, pictures are slightly better, but very hit or miss. What Jeonghan means by that is that dick pics aren’t sexy, and that pictures that are actually sexy rarely depend on the degree of undress. See, for Jeonghan, the sexiest picture of Joshua is a selfie he took right after waking up. For Joshua, the sexiest picture of Jeonghan is him listening to the opposing team’s arguments during a debate session. So clearly, there are variables other than nudity involved.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t appreciate a mirror selfie of you, like, flexing or something. I’m just saying, there’s other stuff that could be more stimulating,” Jeonghan says, sipping on his coffee and thinking he’s being rational.

He wakes up the next day to a text from Joshua that says _how’s this for stimulating?_ and an attached link to a sliding puzzle. It’s one of those where the tiles need to be moved to the right place, be put in the right order for them to form a picture. It’s also a custom puzzle, which means Joshua picked the picture. Jeonghan can’t tell for sure, since the tiles are not in order, but what he can put together is that there’s a lot of exposed skin. 

To: Joshua

youre not serious

From: Joshua

<3

To: Joshua

just send me the pic

From: Joshua

not stimulating enough

And that’s how Jeonghan spends the entire time it takes him to eat breakfast sliding tiles into different positions just to try to get to see a picture, he figures out at one point, of Joshua with his shirt off. Does Joshua have beach pics on his Instagram that would basically provide Jeonghan with the exact same experience? Yes. Does it matter? No, because at this point it’s a competition and a matter of pride. Is he complaining? Also no, because more than the picture itself, it’s satisfying to know that this one is for Jeonghan’s eyes only.

Third, to go back to the list, phone sex is way more entertaining than the previous two formats, mainly because at one point or another they’re bound to dissolve into laughter. You don’t fully comprehend the extent and importance of non-verbal communication during sex until you’re forced to say absolutely everything out loud to paint a picture. It’s embarrassing and awkward and Joshua is only marginally better at it than Jeonghan. He chokes out something along the lines of _I want you inside me_ and the only response Jeonghan is able to come up with is something like _Tough luck, huh?_ And then it’s over, Jeonghan is silent for long enough trying to hold back his laughter that Joshua starts laughing, and the mood is officially buried six feet under. 

Despite all the inconveniences, Jeonghan could also list some of the things he has learned about Joshua.

Jeonghan thinks he himself is pretty much the same during sex as he is every other time. He doesn’t like being told what to do, always prefers doing things his own way. His primary source of fun is influencing other people in one way or another. He’s impatient. And he prefers it when the attention is on someone else. All of those things that apply to both his life in the bedroom and outside of it. 

Joshua, on the other hand, is very different, which Jeonghan loves because he gets to figure him out. Joshua, bright eyed and kind, so understanding, so patient in his everyday life, has no room for patience when he wants to get off. Joshua, who doesn’t offer many verbal interventions and prefers listening, is hard to get to shut up. Joshua’s adaptability and his willingness to go along with what someone else proposes doesn’t necessarily change, the difference is the way he goes about it. Normally, Joshua follows quietly. When sex is involved, Joshua follows, but demandingly. It’s actually a little bit funny, how the only time phone sex properly works for them is when Jeonghan is giving instructions, because Joshua _asks_ him to.

Sometimes it’s slow and lazy, and Jeonghan can take his time and try to drive Joshua crazy with a patience that he couldn’t possibly summon if he had Joshua in front of him, close enough to touch and bite and kiss. He can say things like _not yet, slower_ , and Joshua will slow down with a whine, but slow down nonetheless. Later, Joshua will retrieve his phone from where it’s propped up against the wall and on a bunch of pillows, and stare into the camera with eyes half-lidded and his lips swollen from biting on them, looking relaxed and boneless and like everything Jeonghan wants on the other side of his bed.

Other times, Joshua is antsy and desperate, frustrated and wanting to get rid of pent up stress. He calls Jeonghan already halfway through, and when Jeonghan asks him what he wants, he chokes out an _I just wanted to hear you_ . Jeonghan guides him through the motions, because he gets it. The words that he’d whisper against the dampness on Joshua’s neck, he says against his phone screen. Later, Joshua will apologize for the rush with his chest still heaving. Jeonghan will tell him to forget it. Joshua will lick his lips and say _I wish you were here_ and send Jeonghan spiraling with the imagined sensation of sinking his teeth into Joshua’s bottom lip.

And so it goes.

By the time the sixth month arrives, Jeonghan is counting backwards. 

Three weeks before Joshua comes home, Jeonghan realizes that he has crafted and perfected routines that he’s going to have to abandon. He will have to turn off the alarm that he sets at 10pm to call Joshua and wake him up at 8am. There will be no use for the extra tab on his weather app, the one he checks to remind Joshua to bring an umbrella if it says it’s going to rain. He can delete the hydration app that Joshua made him download, the one that reminds him to drink water and log in his water consumption to feed a little cartoon plant, because Joshua will be back to remind him.

One week before Joshua comes back, Jeonghan has to go and pick up a suitcase full of things that Joshua didn’t need anymore and didn’t want to travel with at the post office. Seungkwan finds a different place with a different roommate, and Jeonghan helps him move out. Jeonghan spends Christmas with his family. He talks to his mom about Joshua, and pretends to be offended when she doesn’t seem surprised. He gets no presents from Joshua, because they agreed never to give each other Christmas presents years ago. What Jeonghan does get is a picture of Joshua's freshly cut and dyed black hair.

Three days before Joshua comes home, it’s his birthday. He gets a travel care package from Jeonghan, because he hadn’t stopped complaining after the fourteen hour flight from six months ago. Jeonghan basically made his own improved version of a business class travel kit. He put everything it, everything that could help Joshua relax, including scents, face masks, moisturizers, an eye mask, lip balm, a toothbrush and toothpaste… Jeonghan picked Joshua’s favorite of each of those things, and even made sure that they were travel size so Joshua wouldn’t have problems taking them on the plane. Jeonghan also sent him a pink, bunny shaped neck pillow.

The morning Joshua boards his plane, it’s night time for Jeonghan, and he can’t sleep.

One hour before Joshua arrives, Jeonghan is a nervous wreck. He drives to the airport scared that he’s somehow going to crash his car and die. He parks near the wrong terminal, and then has to take an airport bus to the right one, which means he doesn’t make it to the arrivals floor before Joshua walks out.

Joshua stands with two suitcases, one bigger than the other, a backpack, a coat folded over his arm, bags from the airport shops, and his phone in one hand. The pink, bunny shaped neck pillow is still around his neck. One fourteen hour flight later, thousands of kilometers closer, jet lagged and exhausted, he is everything Jeonghan could ever want, everything he could ever ask for. And the thing is, Jeonghan doesn’t have to want, he doesn’t have to ask; he has him. 

“Can I help you with that?” he asks once he’s close enough.

Joshua turns around, and it’s not a movie-perfect slow motion moment where Jeonghan gets to register his smile reaching his eyes or anything of the sort. He blinks and suddenly Joshua’s nose is pressed against his neck and his arms are around Jeonghan, together with the coat and the phone and the airport shopping bags. It’s nowhere near comfortable, nowhere near perfect, but it’s extremely, overwhelmingly _right_. Jeonghan’s eyes close without his permission, like his body is telling him to drink Joshua in in every way he hasn’t been able to for the past six months. _You’ve looked at him for half a year, so smell his hair, and feel his warmth, taste his lips if you dare._ Jeonghan doesn’t dare. The fragile moment will shatter in his hands if he does. But he doesn’t need to have his eyes open to press a kiss against the soft skin behind Joshua’s ear. He doesn’t need to have his eyes open, because it’s the same spot where he hid a kiss the day Joshua left, and it pulls him in like a magnet, like a north star. So Jeonghan kisses him there, on the patch of skin trapped by his ear, his hair, and the pink bunny shaped neck pillow. Joshua relaxes in his arms, and Jeonghan feels his chest expand, finally at home in the eye of the hurricane.

Six months isn’t a long time, Jeonghan realizes as they load the three thousand things Joshua was carrying onto Jeonghan’s car. Joshua rids himself of months of distance, of kilometers and kilometers of salt water when he picks up his bursting suitcases and shoves them into the trunk of the car. He peels off a fourteen hour flight, the dry air that makes his throat feel raw, when he slips off his backpack and throws it on the backseat. He shakes off the inevitable questions from people who expected him to bring a piece of a place across the world back with him when he sets the airport shop gift bags behind the passenger seat. When he’s stripped himself of all of it, he turns to Jeonghan, and Jeonghan can’t do anything but reach out, grab the ends of the bunny shaped neck pillow that still rests around Joshua’s neck, and pull him in. 

Jeonghan bridges the gap. With the soft pressure in between them when Jeonghan presses their lips together, he pushes continents towards each other. With the same ease with which his hands make their way down and around Joshua’s waist, he rebuilds Pangea. Joshua’s lips part under his, sugar sweet, sending shivers down his spine, and the tectonic plates collide into an earthquake. Joshua licks his lips and sighs into another kiss, heat pools in Jeonghan’s gut and rises through his esophagus, and molten rock emerges from the Earth’s mantle and pools inside an arc of newly formed volcanoes. 

Joshua didn’t go on a space mission, he didn’t go to war, he didn’t discover the cure for a strange disease abroad. He’s exactly the same in a vibrant way. This is all there is, nothing more and nothing less, and it’s glorious.

.

Jeonghan rests his head on his own arm and runs his fingers down Joshua’s back slowly, one on each side of his spine. He explores the valley between Joshua’s shoulder blades, the ridges and valleys as he makes his way down, sliding over smooth, warm skin until he reaches the dimples on his lower back. Then he starts over, repeating the motion several times. Joshua’s voice isn’t deep, but Jeonghan can still feel all the things moving and vibrating inside his chest through his back as he speaks on the phone.

He looks good like this, Jeonghan thinks. In Jeonghan’s bed, half covered by Jeonghan’s sheets, elbows sinking into Jeonghan’s pillow as they hold him up. His neck is tucked into his shoulders and he lets his head hang down, but when he lifts it, Jeonghan can see fading red marks left behind by his own teeth. He kind of wants Joshua to hang up so he can trace over them with his lips, but it’s fine, he can wait.

Jeonghan woke up alone earlier, the other side of the bed empty and cold like there was never a second person to occupy the space. After washing up and brushing his teeth, he walked into the kitchen ready to complain about it only to find Joshua with his headphones in, working on something in front of the stove. Taking a few steps closer allowed Jeonghan to identify an assortment of plates placed in a line on the counter beside the stove, most of them containing what looked like very thick pancakes.

Jeonghan, for maybe once in his life, decided not to meddle. He had time. He sat on the counter and got to watch Joshua move around the kitchen, his attention going from the stove to the Youtube tutorial he was following as it played on his phone, until he filled the sixth plate of pancakes and turned off the stove.

“What are _you_ looking at?” he said, turning around and taking the one step forward that brought him to stand directly in front of Jeonghan.

“You make pancakes for what seems to be a party of twenty,” Jeonghan said as Joshua placed his palms over his thighs. 

Joshua had woken up at four, jetlagged, tried to find something edible in the fridge, found a bunch of ingredients about to expire instead, and decided that there was no better moment to learn how to make soufflé pancakes. 

“And then what, you decided to make, like, sixty of those?” Jeonghan's fingers slid through the hair on the back of Joshua's head.

“Shut up. They didn’t jiggle. They’re only well made if they jiggle, so I kept trying.”

Jeonghan kissed him, because that’s what you are contractually obligated to do when your boyfriend explains that he organized the pancakes in order from least jiggly to most jiggly. _You could get used to this_ , he thought.

Hansol then picked the most inconvenient moment to videocall, the inconvenient moment being when Jeonghan had both of his hands up Joshua’s sweatshirt, and Joshua was pressing open mouthed kisses to the sharpest point of his jawline. Joshua turned around to pick up, bracketed by Jeonghan’s legs and leaning back against him.

“Did you land okay?” Hansol asked.

“Yeah. Like, over twelve hours ago.”

“Shit. Guess I messed up the timezone math,” Hansol frowned at the camera. “How’s life back home, then?”

“Terrible. I’m having an awful time,” Joshua stretched his arm so the camera would get not only his face, but also the way Jeonghan was practically clinging to him from behind. Jeonghan said hi as he hooked his chin on Joshua’s shoulder, his hands still under his shirt, but this time tracing along his ribs.

Later, Jeonghan discovered that eating could be extremely intimate if you had time, which he did. They did. 

Sitting at the table with Joshua, both of them on the same side because putting more distance in between them was frankly unnecessary, he watched Joshua eat blueberry after blueberry from the tips of Jeonghan’s fingers. He took bite after bite of honey-covered, now golden dough from Joshua’s fork. It was messy. More than once had Jeonghan’s eyes followed the movement of Joshua’s tongue as it licked whipped cream off of the stupid corner of his mouth, the one that had always made Jeonghan feel like a madman. More than once had Joshua reached out to wipe the same whipped cream off of Jeonghan’s lips. 

It was something about the closeness, about the shared food, about feeding and eating made into collective work, as if they were only one body taking care of itself. It was something about the—often overlooked—trust implicit in unquestioningly eating the food someone else makes for you, something about a different love language. _You could get used to this_.

Joshua taught him about having time when he stretched Jeonghan out on his own bed, straddled him, and decided to make him lose every last thread of sanity he might’ve had left. He took Jeonghan’s clothes off at the reverse speed of light, if that even makes sense. Just so, so slowly. When Jeonghan pushed Joshua’s shirt up, it remained bunched up under his arms because Joshua would not stop nipping at his neck for two seconds to let him take it off.

“I’m gonna turn 80 here,” Jeonghan said, annoyed at how breathless he sounded.

“I’ll stop if you tell me to,” Joshua spoke the words against Jeonghan’s neck, making him shiver. Jeonghan didn’t tell him to because he was a lot of things, but stupid wan’t one of them.

Joshua taught him about having time with his mouth moving at a glacial speed in between his thighs, and three hundred years later, when he finally sank down around Jeonghan, left Jeonghan feeling like his whole being was made up of one single exposed nerve. Joshua looked down at him like an artist examining his finished masterpiece, like a warrior about to deliver the final blow, with a victorious smile on his face. Jeonghan didn’t know what he was seeing, all he knew was that it wasn’t even heat burning under his own skin anymore, no, at that point he had fully and completely turned radioactive. 

Another century later, after coming apart and being put back together under Joshua’s fingertips, something in Joshua’s demeanor changed. The need, the usual (almost) desperation hidden behind the veneer, it all slipped through the cracks, and Jeonghan let him shake against him, bit at Joshua’s neck as he interlocked their fingers, held him close as he caught his breath.

Now, Jeonghan slides his hand down Joshua’s back, one finger on each side of his spine, down to the dimples on his lower back, listening to him speak on the phone, thinking about tracing the soft bruises on his neck with his tongue. _You could get used to this._ Joshua hangs up and Jeonghan gets to see, albeit briefly, his own face poking out of a gigantic sweater blanket set as his phone background. 

Joshua climbs over him, kisses his temple, his eyelids, his chin.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were having weekly lunch dates with my mom this whole time?” he asks, then kisses Jeonghan high on his cheek.

“Was that her? You should’ve let me say hi.” Joshua presses their lips together and Jeonghan smiles into the kiss. “You used to eat with her every week before leaving. I thought, you know. She missed you, and she might enjoy the company. She’s great.”

Joshua narrows his eyes. “That explains why she wasn’t surprised when I told her about you.”

“If it makes you feel any better, she wasn’t surprised when I told her either. Kind of acted like she was just waiting for the day to come.”

“We’re getting dinner with her tonight,” Joshua says when Jeonghan gives up and finally starts pressing his lips against the red marks on Joshua’s neck. “So leave those alone, I can’t meet my mom for the first time in half a year with my neck all bruised like I survived a strangling attempt.”

“It’s scarf season, you’ll be fine,” Jeonghan says, but leaves them alone anyway. Joshua’s weight and warmth over him are making him get sleepy real fast. “How long until dinner?”

“Like, the whole day, basically,” Joshua laughs. “We have time. Why? Anything you wanna do?”

Jeonghan flips them over, rests his head on Joshua’s chest, under his chin, and closes his eyes.

“Wanna fall asleep with you.”

Joshua wraps his arms around him, kisses his head, and laughs a little. “Last time you did this, you said it was like sleeping on a slab of marble.”

Jeonghan turns his head, bites the skin over Joshua’s collarbone hard. Trust him to start making joke-complaints when Jeonghan is trying to be sweet. “Maybe that’s the experience I’m chasing after.”

“Alright, then. Don’t blame me when you wake up with severe neck pain.” 

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

And then, “I love you.”

And then, after not a second of hesitation, “I love you more.”

Warms hands shift over his skin, pulling him closer and closer to unconsciousness.

Imagine the scene: you are Jeonghan, and you are most likely irrevocably in love with your best friend. Your best friend loves you back. Thinking about it still makes you want to put your first through a wall.

You are Jeonghan, and you grew around the boy you love the same way he grew around you. Together, you are not tangled stems; you are braided tree trunks. 

You are Jeonghan, and you know what waiting means. You know something about wanting too. 

You are Jeonghan, and “could” is not the right word. You _can_ get used to this. You are allowed. You have time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn’t think it’d take me this long to finish this story lol.
> 
> as i wrote this chapter, i was thinking that i’d really like to write a veeeery slice of life type epilogue. there’s a chance that’s gonna happen, but i don’t know how soon, since being on lockdown kind of kills my inspiration. we’ll see what happens! either way, this is the end of this story.
> 
> if you stuck around until i got my shit in order enough to finish this, thank you! thanks for leaving comments on the first two chapters too, i always say this, but knowing you guys like my stories motivates me to keep writing. i’d love to know what you thought of this chapter too.
> 
> stay safe everyone! until next timeeee ♡
> 
> twt/cc: hug_mp3


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